In This Blog
- Defining roles, establishing transparency, and getting essential feedback
- Why communication and accountability are necessary for project and step
- How users and leaders can own projects together and align efficiently on future organizational success
At ThinkTransit earlier this year, we sat down with Jeff Snyder, Senior Systems/Communication Project Manager at AECOM, to discuss how he communicates active leadership through his actions. Drawing on his experience leading teams for various projects, including Vontas OnTransit and Vontas OnRoute, Jeff delivers advice that any organization seeking improved project flow and organization can use – even beyond the transportation industry.
Keep reading to learn how Jeff empowers others to take ownership and how this drives lasting success.
Aligning on Stakeholder Ownership
To achieve program success in any industry, it’s imperative that you build alignment through project champions and shared ownership.
Jeff emphasizes the importance of creating and supporting project champions at all levels. It starts by establishing your stakeholder at the COO, DCOO, and Director levels. From there, you can proceed to the sub-project champions for each user group, including finance, capital projects, unions, and other relevant groups. By ensuring each group has a representative advocate, you can create buy-in and alignment across diverse stakeholders.
“Make a project, anything that you’re doing, owned by the users, by the directors, by the management, by the union, let them own projects,” he shared. “Don’t force a feature or a function or any system on a user community. That’s been my number one theme for success.”
Key Insight: Building project champions fosters buy-in and alignment among stakeholders.
Defined Roles and Creating Accountability
There is nothing more important than clear, detailed documentation to establish responsibilities. When defining roles, Jeff emphasizes the importance of having granular definitions with context and clarity outlined in contracts, statements of work (SOWs), RFPs, and other key documents.
Ultimately, both vendors and internal stakeholders need to be able to clearly understand and commit to their respective roles in the project. The documentation should clearly outline the responsibilities of each party, fostering mutual accountability and minimizing confusion.
Key Insight: Roles should be crystal clear with responsibilities and expectations moving forward.
Creating an Environment of Communication and Transparency
One should never underestimate the value of consistent, multimodal communication, as it has the power to spread beyond organizational boundaries and limitations. Jeff shares how progress and setbacks are actively communicated in real-time through scheduled meetings, written updates, and other channels for optimal project flow.
His multimodal approach ensures all stakeholders receive information even if they miss meetings or overlook written updates, so the flow of communication is never interrupted.
Key Insight: Key information is repeated in writing and in meetings, and is integrated into all action items to ensure teams are always in the know.
Measuring Success for Sustained Adoption
Above all, true success hinges on the amount of user adoption and engagement. Post- go-live success depends on whether users are actively using the new features and functions, says Jeff. Lack of feedback often signals non use rather than satisfaction.
“If I am not seeing our user community using the features and functions, we could have the smoothest go-live, the smoothest testing, it just isn’t successful,” said Jeff. “And the other measure I have is how much feedback I’m getting.”
According to Jeff, organizations can improve functionality and user experience for the overall betterment of the project through helpful, constructive feedback.
Key Insight: Adoption and continuous feedback are the real indicators of project success.
The Vontas team is proud to partner with leaders like Jeff and organizations like AECOM. When leadership is aligned, organizations can communicate effectively and clearly to align on shared goals.
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