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For as long as I can remember, I have been opening my Effective Project Leadership seminars by asking participants to think back to when they were five or six-years-old, and recall what they wanted to be when they grew up. I ask those who wanted to be a project manager or project leader at that age to raise their hands. I have asked this of hundreds of managers and received a lot of laughter in return, but never any raised hands. No one ever plans to be a project manager. What is even more interesting is to ask participants if any of their children want to be project managers when they grow up. Not surprisingly, no one has raised a hand to this question either. Often someone jokes by saying, "Why in the world would my children, or anyone else for that matter, want to become a project manager?" As my colleague, Dr. Bob Graham, PMP, is so fond of saying, the job of a project manager or a project leader is truly an accidental profession.

Project Management's Tie-in to Greek Mythology

Project Leadership is also a very difficult profession. I often relate project leadership to the Myth of Sisyphus, the Greek king damned to spend the afterlife pushing a giant boulder up a steep hill. When Sisyphus reaches the top of the hill, the boulder rolls down the other side to the bottom. He must then push it up to the top again, the cycle going on forever. One of my seminar participants once said, "A project leader is doomed to meeting impossible specifications, within an unrealistic schedule, and without enough money in the budget. He or she must spend long hours of acrimony and struggle losing friends and neglecting family. When it is finally all over, the reward is that you get to do it again."

Two Types of Project Leaders

There are two kinds of project leaders: full-time and accidental. The professional, full-time project leaders often have "Project Leader" or "Project Manager" in their job title, even though they may have fallen into their trade accidentally. They focus the major part of their role, and contribution to the organization, on project work such as new product development or new plant construction. The true "accidental" project manager or leader is the new organization professional in the lean and mean organizations of the '90s. In addition to their regular production management duties, these accidental project leaders have responsibilities in areas such as process improvement, or some aspect of organizational change.

Whether the role is full-time or part-time, it is stressful and difficult because the project leader sits at the boundary between the larger organization and the world of the project. The organization needs predictability, certainty, specifications, deadlines, and budgets. In contrast, the world of the project is full of contingencies and uncertainty. In my experience, I have found that most project leaders are under terrific stress trying to find ways to manage the power flow from the organization to the project. As Dr. Graham has said, "They [the organization] want it good, fast, and cheap, but in the world of project management you have to pick two: good and fast; good and cheap; or fast and cheap."

Reducing Job-related Stress

I have found that project leaders who are under less stress are in an organizations that have developed a formal reconciliation and/or negotiation process between the world of the organization and the world of the project. In my most recent experience at a major oil company, there was a successful formal process that devoted the first three phases to assessing the feasibility, initiating and defining the project, as well as completing a risk analysis. Through this process, the project leaders were beginning to experience a sense of empowerment and professionalism. However, in order to get the job done, they still needed to know more about how to be effective project leaders.

Knowledge of the best professional practices in project leadership can be very helpful in guiding project leaders to do a better job. It has taken a long time for a formal body of knowledge to emerge in this area because of the accidental nature of the profession. This has contributed to the difficulties experienced by project leaders in the past. Today, however, project managers have a professional guidebook. The Project Management Institute (PMI) has published the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) as a way to formalize the best practices of the profession. Studying the PMBOK and putting this knowledge to practice means an increase in the likelihood of project success.

In conclusion, project management is gaining prominence in the reorganized workplace. Proper project leadership training will ensure that the middle manager of the '80s will have the skills and resources to become a successful project leader for the '90s and beyond.

End of Article

Graham
Dr. Bob Graham, PMP, is principal of R.J. Graham & Associates. He is the author of Project Management As If People Mattered, and co-author of Creating an Environment for Successful Projects.

PMBOK
The Project Management Institute's Project Management Body of Knowledge is the "de facto" standard in managing projects.

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