Collaborative Leadership: Success Stories in Transportation Mega Projects

Abstract

What are the keys to successful collaborative leadership for transportation mega projects? The Federal Highway Association (FHWA) asked six graduate students from the University of Maryland University College to conduct a study to identify the keys to successful collaboration necessary to implement large-scale transportation mega projects. The FHWA asked the students to research three successful mega projects; the I-15 Reconstruction Project in Utah; the Infrastructure for the 2002 Olympic Winter Games; and the Alameda Corridor Project. In addition, two smaller successful projects, the Big I in New Mexico and the Hyperfix Project in Indianapolis, Indiana, were also studied.

Collaborative traits presented by David Chrislip were compared to those identified by the project managers of these successful projects in order to identify the keys to successful collaborative leadership for mega projects. The results of this study will be extremely useful for future mega projects or programs as project managers develop their collaborative approaches to achieve success. The document will serve as a basis for a "lessons learned" approach to collaborative leadership in mega project management.

Target Audience and Stakeholders

If you are a public official, a member of a grass-roots organization, a business or a citizen interested or involved in the planning, funding, development or implementation of mega projects, this paper is a must-read for you. Since by their nature, mega projects require collaboration with numerous entities with different interests, objectives and needs, excellent collaborative leadership is the key to bringing these projects from inception to fruition. All stakeholders, whether in a leadership role or not, can benefit from knowledge of collaborative leadership. This paper will provide each stakeholder with useful information gathered from several successful FHWA mega projects and will guide you through the collaborative leadership process.

Introduction

Collaborative leadership is an important tool in the planning, design, and implementation of mega projects. Transportation mega projects are defined by the total expenditures of $1 billion (or more) for the duration of the project or when the interest in the project is at the national level. Mega projects are inherently complex and difficult, but a review of several mega projects shows these extremely complex projects can be completed on time, under budget, and maintain the public trust using the collaborative leadership model. The purpose of the case study is to review previous successful mega projects and highlight the collaborative leadership efforts utilized by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), state transportation agencies, local governments, and community based organizations that helped to make these projects successful.

Collaborative leadership will be defined along with details on how collaborative leadership was successfully utilized in several transportation mega projects. The mega projects we examined include; the I-15 Reconstruction Project in Utah; the 2002 Olympic Winter Games Infrastructure in Salt Lake City, Utah; and the Alameda Corridor in California. We also examined two other projects that were extremely successful, but did not meet the $1 billion threshold. These projects were the Big I (I-25 & I-40) in Albuquerque, New Mexico and the Hyperfix Project in Indianapolis, Indiana. The collaborative successes of these two projects provided additional insight into successful collaborative leadership.

Each transportation project will be described in detail, identifying the requirements for the project; the stakeholders; and a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis. In addition, budgets, marketing ideas, and collaborative leadership examples within the project will help identify the key reasons for each project's success.

The project team at the University of Maryland University College that compiled the research will perform an assessment of lessons learned by previous mega project managers and provide insightful recommendations to serve as a beneficial tool for future project managers of FHWA mega projects.

What is Collaborative Leadership?

A good way to begin discussing collaborative leadership is to first discuss what it is not. Leadership in the industrial age has mostly consisted of a hierarchical, command and control structure. In an industrial environment, a production-line approach led to stable and predictable processes with a clearly defined power structure. Those at the top owned and controlled the system and the information. In the hierarchical model, people at the bottom of the organization were rewarded for hard work and loyalty by the potential to move up in rank and seniority. We accepted the concept that the success of a venture depended on the leadership skills and directions of the one person at the top (Dentico, 1999). The hierarchical approach is no longer enough since public and private entities are now faced with complex and rapidly changing environments where information is abundant but answers are few. This familiar linear workflow has evolved into a multi-faceted problem-solving effort that needs to be flexible and quickly adaptable. Today's information age presents complex issues that need a different problem-solving approach: collaboration.

Collaboration, as defined by Chrislip and Larson (as cited in Chrislip, 2002):

"...goes beyond communication, cooperation, and coordination. ... It is a mutually beneficial relationship between two or more parties to achieve common goals by sharing responsibility, authority, and accountability for achieving results. ... The purpose of collaboration is to create a shared vision and joint strategies to address concerns that go beyond the purview of any particular party"

The collaborative approach within an organization is based on the concept that all workers within that organization need to be fully engaged in pursuing a common goal or vision to ensure success. When the common goal or vision has buy-in from the workers, productivity is increased within a group setting when compared to individual efforts. The collaborative approach centers on the concept that innovation, creativity, and leadership can come from workers at all levels. The job of a leader becomes more focused on ensuring the work environment is supportive of these workers allowing them to succeed on a personal level, which then benefits the entire organization. The goal of the leader is to foster collaborative relationships within and between work teams thereby bringing diverse viewpoints into the decision-making process (Dentico, 1999).

Christopher Avery (1999) presents the collaborative leadership challenge as a two-part problem. The goal of the collaborative leader is to focus the participants on two concepts: results and meaningful experience. A typical challenge for the collaborative leader is the fact that most of the people brought together into a group are not under the leader's direct control. In addition, many of the people in the group are the ones causing the problems in the first place. An effective collaborative leader uses the dual-focus approach to enable the people causing the problems to solve the problems themselves. The leader prepares for the task by studying the issues and what motivates the various players and then helps them implement a solution.

In addition to being able to bring together the right people at the right time, a collaborative leader must be flexible. Yeakey (2002) describes how recent developments facing today's military such as technological changes and the constantly changing flow of information in the operational environment require the use of adaptive leadership in order to succeed. This concept has parallels to transportation mega projects that are illustrative of the challenges faced by project managers and collaborative leaders. Yeakey discusses the U.S. Army Field Manual (FM) 22-100, Army Leadership wherein it is stressed that leaders must adapt their style to the situation and people with which they are faced at any given time. A military leader has two primary tasks: the task specialist who accomplishes the task; and the social specialist who focuses on the relationships within the group. This is similar to mega project management in that the group dynamics need to be in good order for the mega project task to succeed. The leader must adapt his or her leadership style in accordance with the maturity level of the person being tasked. People in a group will range from being technically able to do a task and having the self-confidence and responsibility to accomplish it alone to people who are neither able to complete a task nor willing to take the responsibility upon themselves to actually get the job done. A mega project often does not get to choose who will participate on a given task from the public's side. Another parallel with mega projects is that the military leader is imposed, as is the mega project management staff. The ability to help those who are being led or managed to look beyond this fact requires the ability to adapt to the given situation.

The collaborative approach is in contrast to an authoritarian federal government approach that has been used for many years. Chrislip (2002) presents several assumptions about public decisions that support the practice of collaboration and collaborative leadership that are keys to successful interactions for transportation mega projects.

• The quality of public decisions stems directly from the quality of the engagement used to make them. There must be a conscious decision made to engage the public that has come to mistrust the government with the goal of arriving at better decisions.
• Public decisions must respond to the real needs of the community or region. Imposing a solution from "Washington" will only cause resentment. Engaging the local citizens and authorities can bring to light their true needs and foster a sense of ownership in the project.
• People in a place should have some control over forces that affect their lives. The world is changing at an incredibly fast pace. Competing interests threaten to divide the public into ever smaller and competing groups. Collaboration helps counter these effects.
• Understanding of others and of essential information about public concerns comes before judgment and decision. Collaboration looks for common ground before moving forward. While it may take time, the effort expended in gaining mutual understanding results in trust and a willingness to compromise.
• In order for collaboration to work, all participants must engage as peers. All participants have equal weight in a collaborative environment. While this may not be possible for all mega project decisions, allowing as many decisions to be made in a peer environment as possible will gain the project credibility and participant buy-in.

Benefits of Collaborative Leadership for FHWA

Mega projects, by their nature are inherently complex because they involve many entities with different interests. There is usually much opposition and controversy surrounding these projects making them even more difficult. There are numerous problems to resolve, many of them involving competing and conflicting interests. The following generalized SWOT Analysis briefly illustrates some of the issues that must typically be addressed and offers possible strategies to resolve them using a collaborative process:

Collaborative leadership in a transportation mega project environment can help the managers of the project successfully deal with the complexities of the project by bringing those affected into the problem-solving and decision-making process. The task of the project managers is to bring together the various stakeholders as soon as possible.

The sense of buy-in gained by the stakeholders, as well as, the detailed information on stakeholder concerns gained by the project managers outweighs the challenges in managing a mix of public and private groups. The following section describes how collaborative leadership has worked in the successful completion of recent mega projects by the FHWA.