What's Next for the Great Project Manager? A Report from the PMO Symposium
As Director of Business Development for PM College, the learning and development arm of PM Solutions, Johanna Mickel possesses over 25 years’ experience as a business development professional working with major organizations by providing professional services for the planning and implementation of large, complex solutions especially in the professional development arena. Based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Johanna manages PM Solutions’ global learning and development.
Attending the PMO Symposium this week, I was caught up in a whirlwind of ideas (Kent Crawford and Al Zeitoun also blogged about this on the PM Solutions site). But one of the most striking quotes came from PMI’s CEO Mark Langley. I’m paraphrasing a bit here, but basically the idea was that “A good project manager brings projects in on time, on budget and within scope. A GREAT project manager understands the strategy behind it all.”
Yes! We could not agree more (see my post about Debbie Crawford’s work on this theme here.)
While we have been focusing on improving the skillsets of project managers around business and leadership for some time, the energy around encouraging them to become involved in realizing strategies and benefits seemed to be bursting at the seams at this year’s Symposium. The “Quick Tip Guide” on team development that was passed out by PMI at the conference seemed to pick up on a key concern that we have here at PM College: it isn’t enough to establish foundational project management skills – you have to also build on higher levels. The thrust of this conference, in my mind, pulls you into that expanded area.
Not that this has to be a huge undertaking; companies can implement advanced training in phases, training not just project managers but all team members, using combinations of training strategies. As we instill advanced knowledge and skills, they naturally begin to improve outcomes across the organization, via the collaboration and conversation that takes place – a theme that was strongly stressed by keynote speaker Jonah Berger of Wharton. He also noted that, despite the frequent feeling of powerlessness, project leaders have tremendous influence and there are subtle ways to use that influence for the good. He also echoed Al Zeitoun’s insight that we need to position people to take contrary views, so that people feel okay with expressing opinions: this is how teams and organizations avoid groupthink.
One fellow I talked with had an interesting perspective: “Is this really new to anyone, the idea that we need to tie project management to benefits?” He had been working for years in product development, where of course the success of the product was king. And this is the theme of our new white paper and webinar: Benefits realization should be what we do as project managers. Top performers have been doing it for years, now everyone needs to do it.
Join us next week to learn more.
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