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Communication, Program Management, soft skills, Project Oxygen.
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Does Cost Team Leadership Matter? Christina N. Snyder
Author Note The views and opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author alone and do not reflect the official policy or position of any other organization, employer, or company.
Abstract Does Cost Team Leadership Matter? An anonymous survey of 150+ cost analysts unanimously reported that a cost-team lead's effectiveness ultimately impacts the team’s products. However, there has been minimal guidance as to what defines good leadership. Using the ten behaviors identified by Google’s Project Oxygen, this paper seeks to understand what skills are necessary for successful cost leadership. The findings lead to a simple conclusion that mirrors that of Project Oxygen: improving our soft skills will improve cost leader efficacy. Keywords: Communication, Program Management, soft skills
Acknowledgements
My most sincere appreciation to the team at ICEAA for all your help with setting up the survey and distributing it to the membership. My gratitude to Mr. Will King for your review, edits, and expertise. Also, a huge thank you to Dr. Benjamin Snyder for your support of my work.
opportunities for team enhancement; they thought outside the box and questioned “Do Managers Matter?”. Beginning in 2009 with the Google People and Innovation Lab (PiLab), they called the effort Project Oxygen and hypothesized that a very flat organizational hierarchy like Google’s “of engineers for engineers” was ideal, and that managerial roles had very little impact on performance. To determine if managers matter, they wanted data to see who the highest performing managers were, who were the lowest performing, and whether it impacts the team. Figure 1 shows their scatterplot of manager performance and the team’s view of the manager. In the next step they studied the quantifiable differences between the most effective and least effective managers. Teams with managers in the most effective quadrant consistently had better team morale, less turnover, and greater employee satisfaction than those with less effective managers in the bottom left quadrant. For example, retention had a stronger correlation to manager quality versus other employee metrics like seniority, performance, tenure, or promotions. To the surprise of the researchers, the data suggested that not only did mangers matter, but that good managers had a significant impact on job satisfaction, employee retention, and performance.
With sufficient data to prove the correlation between manager quality and team performance, the researchers asked the next logical question – “What do the best managers do?”. They sought to understand the qualities demonstrated by top versus the lower scoring managers. During the summer of 2009, Google conducted company-wide double-blind interviews with managers to identify the skills that correlate to manager efficacy and later compared that coded data with the manager’s performance. After several months of data analysis, they came up with
Figure 1 ‐ Manager Quality vs. Performance
eight behaviors that were common among high-scoring managers throughout the company. In 2018, behaviors 9 and 10 were added to make ten total actionable behaviors that improve manager performance.
Figure 2 ‐ re:Work Google Manager Behaviors These behaviors are listed in order of frequency with which the behavior was mentioned during the interview and analysis process. The results of the data analysis were shocking to many at Google. The company that had been built by engineers and typically promoted people based on their technical expertise seemed to value “soft skills” like being a good coach, creating an inclusive team, and caring about the team members more than their technical knowledge and abilities. Laszlo Bock, senior vice president of people operations, commented, "It turns out that [technical skills] that's absolutely the least important thing. It's important but pales in comparison. Much more important is just making that connection and being accessible.”^6
Diving into these behaviors a little deeper, this is how Google defines each behavior:
1.Is a good coach – Agree on development priorities and check in with employee regularly
2. Empowers the team – Does not micromanage 3. Express interest for team personally – Show your team you care 4. Is productive and results-oriented – Focus on priority results and deliverables
The survey was completed by 163 cost analysts with cost estimating experience ranging from one to 40+ years. Approximately 80% of respondents had more than 5 years of cost estimating experience and 46.6% would traditionally be considered “senior cost estimator/analysts” with over 15 years of cost estimating experience.
To explore possible differences between leaders and non-leaders with regards to behavior ranking, a self-reported assessment of their past and current roles as cost estimating team leadership is provided in the table below. An overwhelming majority - 83.4% - of respondents have at one time in their career served as the leader of a cost team with one of more analysts reporting to them, and currently 54.6% are considered leadership/management.
Yes No Yes % No% Have you ever served as the leader of a cost team, as in, leading the effort for a cost product with one or more analysts reporting to you? 136 27 83.4% 16.6% Within your current company/organization are you considered leadership or management? 89 74 54.6% 45.4%
With regards to the importance of leadership in cost estimating, 100% of respondents responded “True” - a cost team lead's effectiveness has an impact on the cost products generated by the team. Given this unanimous response, defining which behaviors leadership should exhibit was the next step.
Figure 3 ‐ Experience Histogram
The survey then asked “The following are qualities that you may value in a cost team lead. Using a Likert scale of (1-5), rate these qualities from important (1) to not important (5)”. The respondents were then presented with attributes of the ten behaviors but did not specifically reference the behaviors themselves. This is similar to how Google surveys their own employees and helps by defining a specific attribute to try to reduce vagueness or different understanding the definition of the behaviors. Based on their response regarding their leadership role, respondents were presented with one of two versions of the survey: one version was presented to those who responded that they are currently in a leadership role, while the other was presented to non-leaders.
Non-Leader Leader Q1 My team lead assigns stretch opportunities to help me develop in my career.
Leadership assigns stretch opportunities to help team develop in their careers. Q2 My team lead communicates clear goals for the team. Leadership communicates clear goals for the team. Q3 My team lead gives actionable feedback on a regular basis.
Leadership gives actionable feedback on a regular basis. Q4 My team lead provides the autonomy needed to do individual jobs (i.e., does not get involved in details that should be handled at other levels).
Leadership provides the autonomy needed to do individual jobs (i.e., does not get involved in details that should be handled at other levels). Q5 My team lead consistently shows consideration for me as a person.
Leadership consistently shows consideration for team as people. Q6 My team lead keeps the team focused on priorities, even when it’s difficult (e.g., declining or deprioritizing other projects).
Leadership keeps the team focused on priorities, even when its difficult (e.g., declining or deprioritizing other projects). Q7 My team lead has the technical expertise needed to review my work.
Leadership has the technical expertise to review the team’s work. Q8 The actions of my team lead show they value different perspectives brought to the team, even if it is different from their own.
The actions of leadership show they value different perspectives brought to the team, even if it is different from their own. Q9 My team lead makes tough decisions effectively (e.g., decisions involving multiple teams, competing priorities).
Leadership makes tough decisions effectively (e.g., decisions involving multiple teams, competing priorities). Q10 My team lead effectively collaborates across boundaries (e.g., team, organizational).
Leadership effectively collaborates across boundaries (e.g., team, organizational).
While both cost groups value the importance of clear communication of goals , opinions of leaders and non-leaders differ in several notable actionable attributes, such as non-leaders assigning a much higher importance to leadership having the technical exertise to review the team’s work and giving actionalbe feedback on a regular basis more than leaders do. Meanwhile, self-identified leaders seem to give higher significance to leadership consistently shows consideration for team as people and the actions of leadership show they value different perspectives brought to the team much more than the non-leaders do. Analyzing the Likert scale responses to the attributes using a divergent bar chart (Figure 5), it is apparent the only skill that leaders believed was less than neutral was Leadership has the technical expertise to review the team’s work. Leaders otherwise seemed more likely to rank skills as a important (1) while non- leaders were much more likely to give neutral or not important (5) responses.
Figure 5 ‐Leadership Attribute Divergent Bar Chart To address what respondents indicated was the most important attribute, communicating clear goals, the guidance can come from what Google provides to train their own managers. In their own rework training site, “Google's high-scoring managers are clear, concise, and honest in their verbal and written communications. But being a good communicator also means being an effective listener. Google encourages managers to be available for their teams and to encourage open dialogue and honest feedback.” 7 The results suggest the cost estimating community would
benefit from creating and implimenting training that teaches rising leaders best practices in written and verbal communication as well as active and effective listening skills. This training could likely also address how to best give actionable feedback.
Figure 6 shows how many respondents chose behaviors as one of the top five responses that they deemed most important when presented with all ten Google Manager Behaviors. The data has been normalized to account for the percentage of each type of survey respondent as more leaders responded to this cost community survey than non-leaders.
Figure 6 ‐ Top 5 skills The three behaviors chosen most frequently were: is a good communicator , empowers the team , and uses the technical skills to advise. Self-identified leaders overwhelmingly chose being a good communicator within their top five most important behaviors. Non-leaders valued the ability of leadership to use their technical skills to advise and their ability to empower the
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
Leaders Non Leaders
Helps grow team members professionally
4 1 6 2 Expresses interest in team personally 0 21 2 25 Is results‐oriented 4 7 1 4 Is a good communicator 18 1 19 1 Has a vision 2 10 9 18 Collaborates across disciplines 2 10 8 13
Overwhelmingly, the cost community believes that expressing interest in the team personally is the least important skill, followed by having a vision and collaborating across disciplines. For the next iteration of the survey expressing interest in the team personally should not be listed as a specific behavior on its own but included as an attribute into other behaviors like being a good coach.
Given this nature of this exploratory survey, it was also imperative to ask if respondents believed additional important behaviors that should be included the next time. These responses are shown in full in Appendix 1 and depicted visually in Figure 8. Of the 163 respondents, 51 mentioned additional behaviors, skills, or attributes that should be considered in the next iteration of this survey; proving there is a lot of room for “soft skills” training at ICEAA’s Workshops and within ICEAA’s curricula. One notable comment shows the importance of this paper and hopefully value of potential ICEAA training courses: “Skills outside of Cost. Cost team leaders who are too narrow into the field are stifling to innovation. Must be progressive and willing to deviate from the "guides" and "training" which are beyond dated (or even wrong from the start)”. Figure 8 ‐ Leadership Skills Word Cloud
Limitations and Future Work This paper scratched the surface of an element of cost estimating that previously received very little attention from the community. However, given that all 163 respondents agreed that a cost team lead's effectiveness has an impact on the cost products generated by the team, it seems that refining the work from this initial study and implementing the findings would be worth further endeavors. Ideally, future studies would include correlating cost product/team metrics to a team’s rating of their cost team leader on aspects such as delivery time, accuracy, team productivity, product credibility, or team satisfaction. This would provide the data similar to that produced by the Project Oxygen study, to prove that the team leader quantifiably affects the team and determine the behaviors that have the most positive impact. Realistically, all cost organizations and agencies could do their own internal experimentation using the Project Oxygen method to gain their own unique insights into their leadership. In the meantime, using the feedback from this exploratory survey, training could be developed that will result in more effective leadership and therefore improve the products delivered and team satisfaction.
Though ICEAA has over 1,000 cost estimators worldwide, this survey was delivered in English and filled out primarily by North American cost analysts. Given ICEAA’s wide variety of international support could expand the reach of a future survey. Also, with over 1, members of ICEAA the survey participation rate was only between 10-15% of known cost estimators. Although this was a good response rate for the initial work, hopefully future work will have a greater participation.
Though the survey asked for years of cost experience, that does not necessarily reflect the respondent’s age, especially in the lower numbers. If a future survey were also to ask the respondent’s age, it could be determined whether younger cost estimators have the same expectations of their leadership as the more senior estimators. Similarly, “A survey by Virtuali found that 83% of millennials want fewer layers of management. This means they want managers who are easily approachable and willing to take their opinions into account.^4 ” Seeing if one’s expectations of cost leadership is different based on age would be insightful when trying to lead and motivate a team with a diverse age set.
Appendix 1 – Any skills not mentioned above that you think are important qualities of cost team leaders?
References
International Journal of Corporate Social Responsibility , 2 (1), 2–10. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40991-017-0021-
(2019). What Makes a Great Manager of Software Engineers? IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering , 45 (1), 87–106. https://doi.org/10.1109/tse.2017.
Impraise. https://www.impraise.com/blog/project-oxygen-8-ways-google-resuscitated- management
YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JattR1uoX7g&t=922s
