Assignment Sample on U20589 People Management and Risk
Introduction
In this report, the details of London mayor’s Electric Vehicle (EV) infrastructure delivery plan with culture and people management, risk assessment and mitigation will be discussed elaborately.
1. Analysis of cultural significance to successfully deliver the London mayor’s EV infrastructure delivery plan
Culture has the utmost importance in population where it generalises the interaction among the people to accept any change and formulate the necessary steps corresponding to the societal needs and requirements. London’s mayor’s visionary about the project is to provide healthy streets and healthy people, a good experience to public transport as well as new homes and jobs to the population with the EV infrastructure delivery plan. It has invested a lot to develop the EV charging capacity of London with Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates and electric motor performance for defining drive cycles with the collaboration of several public and private groups of stakeholders for technical feasibility and financial viability (Nicolaides et al., 2019). However, Cultural values are intricate to the society where it indicates the social disparities and cohesion in respect to the project of EV infrastructure delivery plan by the Mayor of London. On the contrary, Hofstede’s cultural dimension has a better understanding of the Culture of the United Kingdom (UK) to acknowledge the people’s perception and engagement for the successful delivery of EV infrastructure delivery plan in the city of London.
Hofstede’s cultural dimension shows the inequality in power distance ranked with 35 which is low and inherent in British society and the equal distribution of power is the common concern of the people to equally take part in infrastructural reform for healthy transport (Dhaundiyal, Chakravarty & Joshi, 2020). Moreover, individualism is the highest in the society of London with a high score of 89 which indicates the route of happiness is concerned with personal fulfilment and increase of consumerism to support the ‘ME’ culture. The masculinity stands at 66 which is high in the society of Britain to indicate that the society is driven by tough competition, achievement and success with the best in the field value system to perform ambitiously. The degree of uncertainty avoidance is around 35 where it reflects the people’s concerns that planning for the future is not detail oriented with a flexibility to emerging and changing situations without worriedness and drives for creativity and a high level of innovation. On the other hand, the long term orientation stands at the score of 51 which is undetermined about the dominant preference of the British people to relate the past to deal with the challenges of present and future. The degree of indulgence stood at 69 and classified as highly indulgent with a positive attitude to enjoy life along with great importance in leisure and having fun with the pleasure of spending.
2. Evaluation of project management leadership theories in accordance with EV infrastructure delivery Plan
Project management leadership definition
Project management leadership has the role and responsibility to effectively direct, guide and influence the work structure of the team with specific behavioural change to successfully accomplish the project objectives. The leadership attributes will be best suited to create a visionary about the target destination, compelling reason to involve and engage the team, a realistic time table and capacity to attract a willing team. It greatly deals with team selection, allocation of responsibilities, authorization of payments, negotiation and conflict management with internal and external stakeholders to determine the successful delivery of the EV infrastructure delivery plan of the London Mayor.
Project management leadership theories
Trait theory
Trait theory of leadership focuses more on the leaders neglecting the follower with inborn or innate characteristics compromising the factors of personality, physical, mental and intelligence to deal the project management successfully. The core competencies of the leadership are influential to coordinate the different team and partners corresponding to projects with allocation of duties and risk management driven through innovation and intelligence. Specifically, sense of ownership and mission objectives, political awareness, action orientation, interpersonal assessment, degree of communication, relationship building are appropriate characteristics of trait theory to manage and coordinate the project with the subordinates. Cognitive and personal effectiveness has great impact on managing the project successfully with the helping and human service to effectively interoperate within various teams and partners to accomplish the project successfully (Pretorius, Steyn & Bond-Barnard, 2018). On a brief note, the leadership traits are best suited with the project management to collaborate and coordinate the teams successfully with marginalising the conflicts in internal and external context, negotiations and authorization of different and broad categories. The traits of leadership in the project management help to improve the traffic congestion, installation of charging equipment, innovation on Electric motor and capacity for long term usability while gaining public confidence for using public transport for daily commute.
Contingency theory
Contingency theory of leadership allows the best fit solutions among the project environment and subsystem to successfully manage the overall project where it coordinates the situational favourableness to complete the assigned task. Leadership effectiveness is best matched for the particular situation to deal with the complexity and determine a best solution for the arising complexity. On a contradictory note it always took a realistic approach of management which generally discards the universal validity of principle and blends with personal effectiveness for suggesting the best fit approach towards managing the project team and coordination among the partners. It allows a creative and innovative management style for team and project planning to accomplish it within the time frame. It allows a wide range of possibilities to react with the problem and find creative solutions depending upon the circumstances. The project manager might discrete the decision making for making the project viable within the given parameter through the regulatory focuses of leadership towards the employee job attitudes of involvement, commitment and outcomes as retention and performance (Rehman et al., 2020). Further, it has adopted the righteous behavioural aspects in the project management to maximise the workforce potential and feasible technical solution for infrastructure development plan.
Transformational leadership
Transformational leadership seems to be best effective to the project management with exclusive team management capability through personal skills of communication, interoperability, cultural influence and creation of value for the project partners. It may be noted that, visionary transition, individual growth for driving change with innovative ideas to successfully encourage the efficiencies and project outcome. Transformational leadership abilities and skills are influential to operate the team with little or less directives to effectively manage the project work and coordinate with different teams for gaining project success. It usually motivates the subordinates with flexibility and co-ownership roles for optimization of resources and execute outperformance from the employee through empowering the individuals on physical and mental support. Furthermore, transformational leadership offers a loose supervision and control over the team with confidence on subordinates’ commitment and capabilities which greatly influence the project working in a compatible manner to accomplish the project more conveniently. It gave inspiration for shared vision, posed a challenge to existing processes, enabling individual consideration and opportunity to act independently is greatly influential for successfully achieving the project goal with multi-dimensional feasibility (Iqbal et al., 2019).
Recommendation of leadership style for the project
The transformational leadership style is recommended for the London mayor’s EV infrastructure delivery plan where it will support, adopt and ensure the project viability through managing personal skills and empowering individuals with the successful transition of visionary of the project. The EV infrastructure will compromise the short- and long-range travel of electric vehicles with emergency evacuation strategy, adapting street infrastructure development with ensuring consecutive availability of reliable charging points and traffic management in the streets of London. The transformational leadership will coordinate the public, partners, and investors for optimum engagement and adaptability with the innovative ideas and excellent interpersonal skills to implement the project objectives for the long term sustainability (refer to Appendix-1).
3. Critical analysis of the managing change model to implement the EV infrastructure delivery plan
Change management model
Kotter’s 8step model of change
Kottler’s 8 step model for change emphasising on the creation of urgency in the public mind which will illuminate the use of EV for public transport to minimise the carbon footprint on the environment with improvement on public health (Pardo et al., 2021). On a brief note, it deliberately assesses the potential threats and repercussions which need to crop up for effective results with honest dialogue and convincing discussions through intervention and gathering support of the industry people and key stakeholder and customer on change. It engages the effective leadership with positive commitment and forms a coalition to work as a team with ensuring the cross functionality of various departments for implementing the change. Apart from that, creation of a strong vision with core values and strategic ways to implement the EV infrastructure development will enlarge the responsibility of change leaders to transit the visionary among the project coordinates for successful project planning and changes to happen. The continuous monitoring of the potential barriers and peoples resistance need to be proactively taken into consideration and remove the obstacles with reward and motivation will ensure the endorsing change to gather more engagement of people for supporting change.
More than that, the creation of short-term targets will help people to be accustomed with the change management process with less expense and achievability with less prone to failure for a better sustainability of the project. The successive improvement needs to be analysed and shared for public participation will sustain the change and accelerate the overall project performance. Further, the implementation of change needs to be fully visible as an integral part of public life to access the EV on public transport in accordance with the growing sustainability of public health and climate.
Lewin’s change management model
Lewin’s change management perspectives have an efficient process on improving the consumer awareness and perception towards the change through EV infrastructure development plan in London which collaborates the change aspects in three different steps known as unfreeze, change and refreeze (Matthews et al., 2018). It provides an intuitive and fundamental understanding of the change process which starts at the creation of motivation for the change popularly known as unfreeze through breaking up the existing process to communicate the effectiveness of the change for public causes. It usually argues to engage the key stakeholders from the population to promote awareness about the change and communicate openly to win the support of the public. Other than that, it helps concentrate the importance of the change for greater perspectives of people concerned to gather mass support and win the confidence. Next phase of the change management model is called change where specific changes happen in a short span and addresses the people’s issues regarding uncertainty where people usually adopt the new directives in their daily life. However, personal transition in a changing environment needs to be accommodated in the change strategy with effective communication and granted time feasibility.
On the other hand, the last step of this model is refreezing where the successful implementation of overall change is carried out to institutionalise the change in the city of London to develop the infrastructure for being ready for EV adoption in public life.
Recommendation of change management model for the project
Kottler’s 8 step model of change is positively influential for the London mayor’s EV infrastructure delivery plan which accommodates the public concern with a step by step approach and successfully delivers the project effectiveness to the people. It also involves all spheres of public through frequent interventions in public domain to address the people’s concern to remove the obstacles of the project and communicate a perfect visionary and strategy to the public.
4. Mayor of London’s Electric Vehicle (EV) Infrastructure Delivery Plan
Identification of the project aim
The main aim of the project is to reduce the levels of carbon emissions and to address the issue of climate change by replacing vehicles running on fossil fuel with Electric Vehicles (EVs) which is to be done through promoting the use of EVs and making people aware about the benefits of avoiding cars in confronting the issue of climate change.
Identification of risk factors
Risk Register
| Risk factors | Possible impacts |
| Cost | An unexpected increase in the cost of the project may impact the entire project in a negative way by creating shortage of required funds |
| Commercial failure | The project may face commercial failure due to excessive dependency on a small group of customers which is a major threat to the project |
| Lack of strategic planning | Lack of strategic planning may give rise to several unexpected issues and unwanted problems eventually slowing down the pace of the entire project |
| Cyber-attacks | Cyber-attacks may impact the project in a profound way as it may seriously threaten privacy of the project and create issues related to personal breach of data of the team members of the project |
| Stakeholder commitment | Lack of active engagement of the most important stakeholders of the project will definitely impact the project in a negative way by creating unavailability of materials and services essential for the project. On the other hand, it may be added that thy involvement of the senior management becomes essential in handling issues related to stakeholder pressure (Wijethilake & Lama, 2019) |
| Leadership issues | Lack of a strong as well as an effective leadership strategy may become a major threat to the project as lack of leadership will generate friction, conflict and misunderstanding in the team |
| Level of resistance | Resistance to undergo change due to lack of trust on the project may become a major cause of concern for the project |
| Inadequate integration structure | Inadequate integration structure may result in creating confusion during the project which may impact the project operations in a negative way |
| Inappropriate project schedules | Unattainable as well as unrealistic project schedules create numerous problems where meeting deadlines becomes impossible and thus hamper the entire course of the project |
| Unfulfilled customer needs | Unfulfilled needs of the customers will definitely push the project towards a failure and paying no attention towards the needs and requirements of the customers will certainly impact in a negative way |
Table 1: Risk register
(Source: Self-created)
Summarising of the findings
According to the above table, it may be asserted that all the possible risk factors are to be mitigated in a proper strategic way in order to generate desirable outcomes from the project and due to this reason all the risk factors are to be analysed and evaluated with utmost care and attention. However, it may be implied that risk management has emerged as an essential aspect of any project which becomes immensely vital in identifying the threats and issues and eventually helping in increasing the value of a project (Willumsen et al., 2019). On a broader note, it needs to be mentioned that the project has various risk factors and risk areas which are required to be addressed carefully in order to avoid unwanted outcomes and avoid negative impacts. In other words, it may be added that the risk factors include risks related to cost, commercial failure, lack of strategic planning, cyber-attacks, leadership issues, stakeholder commitment, level of resistance to change, unfulfilled needs of the customers, inappropriate project schedules and inadequate project integration. All these risk factors may impact the entire project and due to this reason finding ways to mitigate these issues have become extremely essential and necessary.
In a more specific way, it needs to be stated that addressing the risk factors and finding out alternatives will definitely remove the risk factors and may also turn into opportunities which will impact the project in a positive way. On a contradictory note, it has to be argued that following a customisable project risk management plan becomes beneficial in handling the risk areas in an effective way and also provides assistance to project managers in dealing with complex situations (Firmenich, 2017). On the other hand, it needs to be mentioned that paying attention towards risk areas and identification of the risk factors becomes an essential step in optimising the overall project and using the available resources in the most efficient way. Furthermore, it may be opined that application of risk assessment tools and techniques also becomes crucial in dealing with the risk factors and also becomes vital in leading the project towards its specific goal. Moreover, it needs to be implied that using various software becomes essential in analysing the various innovative approaches which makes the progress of a project smooth and error free (Afzal & Sadim, 2018).
Risk mitigation strategies
Cost
It may be asserted that the project needs to pay attention towards calculating the exact cost of the project by including all the factors and it is also important to conduct a thorough market research about the cost estimation which will reduce the risk related to unavailability or shortage of financial resources during the project on EVs.
Commercial failure
It has to be opined that creation of a clear and transparent business plan and aligning it with the needs and demands of the customers becomes essential in making a project commercially successful. However, it may be stated that managing the stakeholders directly impacts the success or failure of a project and due to this reason proper planning and its execution becomes an absolute necessity (AlMarar, 2019).
Lack of strategic planning
Strategic planning may be done through communicating with the members of the project team and identifying the aims, objectives and goals of the project in a clear way which will definitely become fruitful in achieving the desired results at the end of the project.
Cyber-attacks
Using the latest technology and taking advice from experts is an effective way to avoid cyber-attacks along with using powerful software’s will certainly mitigate the risk factor related to it and will enhance the quality of the project.
Stakeholder commitment
Stakeholder commitment may be achieved through establishing a strong communication with all the prospective stakeholders of the project and also by taking feedback of the stakeholders on a regular basis in order to avoid any sort of misunderstanding. Moreover, it has to be proposed that implementing changes in the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) policies aids in managing the stakeholders in a proper way (Khojastehpour & Shams, 2020).
Leadership issues
Maintaining flexibility in leadership roles becomes extremely essential in leading a project in a successful way as the changes in leadership roles play a crucial role in managing various aspects of a project in a strategic way. However, it needs to be asserted that focusing on project oriented leadership and changing leadership styles according to the changing needs of a situation becomes immensely important in the successful completion of a project (Müller & Turner, 2017).
Level of resistance
Engagement of the project team members becomes an important factor in overcoming resistance in project management and due to this reason overcoming the opposition of the team members becomes crucial. Along with this, communicating the changes in a clear way with the employees also proves beneficial in overcoming conflicts in the team in a successful way.
Inadequate integration structure
Following various small integrations rather than following complex integration methods becomes effective in overcoming issues and risks related to inadequate integration structure and using some system integration software also becomes an important way to overcome challenges.
Inappropriate project schedules
Making realistic and attainable project schedules becomes extremely important in achieving goals and targets of the project which ultimately improve the confidence of the team members to a greater extent.
Unfulfilled customer needs
Paying attention to the needs and demands of the customers along with conducting a detailed market research becomes essential in fulfilling the needs and requirements of the customers which ensures project success.
Identification of risk management team structure and its roles
Figure 3: Risk management team
(Source: Self-created)
The risk management team consists of the advisory committee, risk assessment committee and the risk mitigation team and it may be asserted that a team is also there to analyse and evaluate risk eradication. It needs to be opined that the advisory committee pays attention towards providing all the essential advice to overcome the existing risk areas and provide guidance to the risk assessment committee and to the risk mitigation team. On the other hand, it may be added that the risk assessment committee constantly tracks the areas of risk and passes information to the risk mitigation team in order to mitigate the issues as quickly as possible in the most effective way. Furthermore, a team consisting of senior staff evaluates and monitors the overall process of risk mitigation and ensures ultimate safety and smoothness of the entire process through active indulgence in every step of the mitigation process. In an overview, it may be opined that the success or failure of the project depends on the efficiency of the risk management team to a considerable extent.
Conclusion
From the above discussion, it may be concluded that the task of project management critically revolves around the leadership’s will and capabilities to effectively control, monitor and coordinate all the participants with decision making, planning and inclusive management.
References
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