Project Management vs Project Leadership....Save me from this linear thinking!
John Gervais
Project Manager @ Winchester Ammunition | PMP, Leadership, Veteran Advocate
“The Action Register, I must complete the action register,” say I as I drive into work, preparing for the weekly Monday morning project huddle. “I must check and cross-check that my project leads, engineers, and stakeholders, have completed their tasks from the prior week.” This is it! This is my big “Touch Point” for the week, before I pass my project status on to my superiors.
Meeting Starts: To my junior engineer, “Has the status on line two, subsection c, been brought up from a “3 Completion to a 4, Completion?” If not, why not? “Delays you say?” “Could not get the resources you needed?” Why is this the first I am hearing about this, I think to myself? No matter….too much to cover….next action item.
Now comes my meeting with my supervisor. “Yes sir, we are moving along. “Project is on track. Budget and Schedule are looking great,” as I reflect on the 500 lines in my Excel spreadsheet that serve as my management tool. I suppose this is the best I can do. After all, most of my team cannot read an MS Project flow chart and would not know if I linked three parallel actions, Finish-Start, back to them completing “Action Item 2, subsection c.” But we are making progress, or are we? I know Hope is not a method, but I sure hope this will all work out.
Let us not argue this point. We all have been here. Lost in a sea of Gwande’s “Checklist Manifesto,” which has a large place in Project Management, but a lesser space in Project Leadership.
Recommended by LinkedIn
The prevailing question tends to be, “How do I incorporate Project Leadership into Project Management?” I assert that prevailing question need to change to, “What Project Management processes and procedures will augment my Project Leadership, to encourage persons taking ownership of their tasks, instilling a can-do attitude, and developing a sense of urgency across the project framework.
I have some ideas on this topic, but before I share. I would love to hear your thoughts on how you lead Projects.
Citation: Gawande, Atul. 2011. The Checklist Manifesto. London, England: Profile Books.
Project Manager @ Winchester Ammunition | PMP, Leadership, Veteran Advocate
1yGood points all! I am always shocked at the numbers of books on leadership the dominate the self-help sections of book stores. Yet, rarely do we see this out into practice. PMBOK goes into great detail covering leadership as a power skill. But it is the long lead time item that takes years to develop. Do we train our junior folks who sho PM potential? Perhaps a bigger piece of project leadership is getting the team to see the big picture and how they fall into this? Are you an expert at MS Project? If as the PM, I sometimes struggle with the nuances of the software, how can I expect a junior engineer to understand his piece in the big game? To get buy in, people have to understand their sense of purpose on the team.
Project Manager @ Winchester Ammunition
1yGreat question, John! Thanks for polling the group. Lots of potential answers; some better than others depending on the team. The book answer: A project leader is more focused on the people than the technical aspects of the project. The detailed answer: A project leader builds a relationship of trust that enables him / her to receive the 4-1-1 on real time issues the team is encountering that is preventing throughput (the desired end state which results from staying on glide). A project leader is skilled in the art building trust and collaboration, and leads through “guiding coalition (if you have t heard this, read “Leading Change” by Dr. John Kotter. You’ll be glad you did). Strong leaders understand their milestones and benchmarks (literally) ‘to the date.’ They dedicate nearly 90% on the things they know have a high propensity to fail, not those things that they know are ‘going just right.’ A project leader works with the technical experts and asks them, “what do you need to fix this?” Then (90% rule here….) they resource it, or they re-scope.
Transformational Leader... Honest/Direct, Courageous/Humble, Willing/Able... Let's do something great together!
1yI humbly submit my thoughts...I don't think we should think of project management and project leadership as two separate things. I think that all project managers are leaders. These leaders should be well versed in the skills and attributes of leadership. Study past lessons and work with the available tools, best practices and theories we have available to us. Applying the above with great effort, conscious intent, will likely prevent many situations like the one you described. If you agree that all project managers are leaders, then ask yourself what type of leader you are currently and how can you improve? If you are well versed with certain leadership styles laize afair, transformational, servant, and so on, I would research then first before answer. I suspect you are familiar with these concepts, so these should be easy questions to answer. It might take some self reflection. So, I think your asking the wrong question "What Project Management processes and procedures will augment my Project Leadership, to encourage persons taking ownership of their tasks, instilling a can-do attitude, and developing a sense of urgency across the project framework. " I say that b/c of what you want to improve is only done thru leadership