Accountability: Create the Competent Workforce These Times Demand
When are bad times good for you? — when they result in changes that separate the essential from the non-essential. As government and the private sector struggle to get more done with less, they must reexamine their processes and assumptions. Only by doing so can they create improved transparency and accountability, resulting in the improved public confi dence that will fuel economic recovery. Accountability is Key.
Making Competence and Accountability the Norm Executives today not only want to have a grasp of the details of the initiatives underway in the organization—they are required to do so, by Sarbanes-Oxley in some cases and by the guidelines for managing American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds in others. Forging a link between the decision-making level of the organization and the project level is therefore a pressing business need. That link—providing up-to-date status reporting on important initiatives in the organization’s portfolio of projects—is the project manager. But merely naming a position “project manager” does not create a disciplined and organized approach to complex tasks, although this is a mistake that even the best organizations often make. Project management is a discipline with known key success factors and best practices, and research has shown that a qualified project manager is the single most important factor in success.