Even inside organisations, trust is a significant and increasingly pervasive issue. I experience this both in the UK and worldwide. Before arriving on this GSM Portal Project, I spent a great deal of time scenario planning for all the eventualities that could and did arise. Both I and the Zagreb Director simultaneously, without contact, sketched one of those scenarios; that if the project were restarted then Croatia would need to work with India. This meant that I would be managing and working with a small Indian team in Zagreb, the Zagreb team, and the remaining Indian team back in India. What I did not realise straight away was that while the teams trusted me; they had some difficulty in trusting each other.
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Croatia led the GSM Portal development, not only because they held a significant skills advantage, but because they were closest to the client. India took the backup role, assisting development and providing quality assurance. It soon became clear to me that the project was being deliberately sabotaged because establishing trust was being hindered by; the jostle for project control, poor communication and lack of respect for working culture differences – between the two teams and London. Onsite in Zagreb for example, there were management issues with London. Although goals of the project were agreed by all (including the client), these issues were strongly grinding down the project (which later, indirectly, led to the client suspending the project).
Often issues of trust, emanating within projects, can be brought on (or be contributed) by external factors. For example; disparities on technical view points, hostility towards new ideas, lack of management support, low project team esteem and the implementation of processes lacking consultation. The impact for each is illustrated by a project slow down or non-compliance. Without trust there is no real way for a Project Manager (PM) to get stakeholders to have the same view of the project. A good PM must question; how do I go about getting trust? Who do I need to enrol to help me? As an International Project Manager what do I do to demonstrate I can be trusted?
Before arriving in Croatia, I was 70% through development of my project bible wherein, I had already identified several trust issues and created scenarios for as many as I could (completing the solutions to each onsite). For example; with the help of the core Zagreb team, we managed to quell the trust management issues between London and Zagreb - when I beat IBM to win development of the GSM Portal’s content management system. The continued impact of the win, did not dawn on me until the Chairman arrived in Zagreb to meet with me. By that time I was already working on the next scenario, building integrity. The Chairman’s visit helped to boost the trust management steps that had solidified in Croatia and begun take up in India.
Bridging the gap to engender trust between different cultures within projects requires experience, obtained effectively in the field. This is because solutions to trust require direct contact. Otherwise what normally happens (and it did at the beginning of this GSM Portal Project) decisions you make locally (that you expect to be followed by the remote teams) can and often are superseded.
Today, many organisations fail to engender trust on their projects, believing this can be obtained via video / phone / web conferencing. Very few organisations have come to realise that trust speeds up project delivery, thereby saving time and costs. The continued impact of developed and managed trust leads to better client retention … yet International Project Managers still face a hard time justifying travelling costs.
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Trust building skills are a prerequisite tool for all International Project Managers. It is true that trust building is a soft skill in project management, but failure to implement and manage this successfully will lead to your project experiencing delays or even non-delivery. This is one skill you do not want to overlook.
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