5 minutes with… Damien O'Connor
Damien O'Connor is an experienced leader in the energy industry, with over 20 years’ experience in Technology and Energy. Damien started his career as a software developer before moving into Project Management and Delivery. With an MBA from Bayes business school, he holds a guest lectureship at the University of Cardiff focused on Agile Delivery and Change Management.
This article was originally posted on LinkedIn in May 2023 and Damien has kindly given permission for the content to be added here.
Why did you choose a career in delivery or project management?
In a single word: Adventure. I think the original driver was seeking greater variety, interaction with people, and excitement from my daily work. After a few years, solving bigger problems, led me to take on greater and more diverse responsibility and as a result having more business & customer impact.
It also has to be said that delivery is a very transportable skill that has allowed me to work in many different industries, live in 6 different countries and continue to travel.
What advice would you give someone starting out in the industry?
Understand yourself and find a role that suits you. Understanding yourself might mean answering questions like: What do you like and don’t like? What is your personality type? How you prefer to interact with others? What is important to you as a person?
Then choose a career or path that leverages your strengths, builds on your interests, and suits your personality.
The major problem with this piece of advice is that normally people only discover these things about themselves after working for a few years. So it’s an ongoing exercise of self-discovery.
So, my advice is to get started, learn about yourself and change course as needed.
Have you ever worked on a particularly difficult project? Why was it rubbish/tough/hard?
Sure, many. From my perspective, the hardest ones always involve some combination of high uncertainty, people related change, and conflict with the existing culture / ways of working / status quo. These are difficult because they require us to work with uncertainty for longer than we might like to, to keep reassessing where we are compared with our target(s) and figure out what to do next.
I think this is because we are hardwired to dislike uncertainty and will do almost anything to create certainty. By “create certainty”, I mean making a choice based on insufficient or inaccurate information. Oddly, doing this can result in giving up valuable optionality as a result. Resisting this urge to create certainty is what I found hard about these types of projects.
In my experience, these projects are created in response to some external event or threat. Something that forces us to rethink what we are doing and why. For example, the projects I have in mind, these “inspirations” were new market competition, acquiring another company, and a cyber attack. All of these events were outside my sphere of control or even influence, and yet, I needed to work though the situation.
What do you think are the most important skills for a delivery or project manager to have?
Firstly, it’s the ability to learn something and put it into practice.
Particularly in the last 10 or so years, delivery practices have been much more dynamic so we’ve all had to learn / explore new ways of working. The only way to do that is to manage one’s own ego to be open to learning and then being able to put it into use.
Secondly is influencing other people.
All projects or deliveries involve working with other people, so the ability to influence is key to getting things done. By influencing skills I am really talking about an awareness of the different ways people influence and choosing the most appropriate one(s) for the situation. Robert Cialdini’s books offer a good breakdown of influence.
Lastly, is organisation.
Organisation can relate to self-organisation, team level, and/or organisation wide. To me, David Allen’s book titled “Getting Things Done” is a good guide for self-organisation. While agile practices in general offer useful tools for easier, more efficient and/or effective team work to achieve common goal(s).
What do you think are the biggest challenges facing delivery and project managers today?
The changing and uncertain nature of what Delivery means. The fact that we can’t agree on the name (project management vs delivery) is an example of this.
Delivery/Project Management is much more dynamic than it once was. As a result, we all need to adapt our skills, practices, and thinking to new contexts and situations. This is not easy. Our egos often get in the way of us considering the context and we make decisions based on ‘what has worked in the past’, ‘what we know’, and/or ‘what should work’ without considering whether the situation is different this time. This is the uncertainty concept from my earlier answer.
This is quite funny as you could argue that ‘removing uncertainty’ is the most valuable thing a delivery person can do. At least, this is often the case from a stakeholder’s perspective.
So dealing with uncertainty is both our biggest challenge and path to adding value.
What projects would you have loved to have been involved in?
Easy. Anything at high impact / value, involving innovation, or solving valuable problems. Most projects / initiatives at SpaceX, Apple, and OpenAI would probably fall into this category.
This post is part of a services called ‘5 minutes with’ series of articles from people in the delivery management and project management space.