The Complete Project Manager – Introduction

This week I preview material that has occupied much of my time over the last few months—writing about The Complete Project Manager—the title of the next book that Alfonso Bucero and I co-author.  Success in any environment largely depends upon completing successful projects, and successful projects get done by skilled project managers and teams, supported by effective project sponsors.  Integration of knowledge and skills makes the difference in achieving optimized outcomes.  The Complete Project Manager integrates key technical, people, team, business, and organizational skills.  This integrating process has been a passion we’ve shared over the years, so this project allows us to pull it all together.  We share insights and examples—culled from personal as well as contributed experiences—intended to motivate action towards embracing a complete project manager mindset.

Objectives for this material:

• Change thinking about necessary skills to enhance on the job performance
• Apply an organic approach to leading and managing projects
• Realize what needs to be done to achieve better
  results and how to do it
• Further develop project or program management professional careers

While many professionals develop their craft through advanced education and on the job experiences, there comes a time when an enhanced skill set and a new perspective about working with people is necessary in order to advance to the next level of performance.  How do you move beyond this plateau?  We believe in a holistic approach to open eyes, minds, …and doors, so that changed thinking can be applied immediately.  The “right” set of skills depends on individual starting points, aptitude, attitude, desires, and supporting context.

We use a complex molecule from organic chemistry as a metaphoric graphic for the complete project manager. The intent is to apply a form of bio mimicry to highlight key concepts.  As in life itself, unlimited combinations are possible for the molecule surrounding complete project managers.  There are many ways to assemble successful outcomes.  New possibilities will emerge by various combinations of skills.

Many people are not aware of the need for them to change their thinking and of how this mindset inhibits their performance. We argue to adopt, adapt, and apply a different approach, leading to more consistent, timely, and quality results.  This can happen because project managers apply necessary leadership, influence, sales, and negotiating skills that had previously been overlooked or under applied.  With conscious application of these skills, project managers get recognized through achieving business outcomes that had heretofore eluded them.  The goal is to achieve greater levels of personal satisfaction and professional advancement.

People harbor many “enemies of change”—such as not invented here, too busy, not enough time, cognitive blindness, natural
reactive processes—that inhibit adoption of better leadership and management practices.  Some of these enemies might be ingrained beliefs, harbored by people over a lifetime of experiences.  We cannot change those beliefs; we can only change the believer.  The way to do this is to provide enough evidence and examples that tap internal motivational drives.  The next step for individuals is to implement a complete systems approach that achieves greater results, and is
simple yet powerfully—and universally—effective.  This posting is a beginning….

Randy Englund, Englund Project Management Consultancy, www.englundpmc.com