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One of my clients send me this little thought provoking quote this morning:
The difference between ordinary & extraordinary is just that “little extra”- Unknown
I my role as an outsourced project consultant working on managing clients program and project delivery, I have the opportunity to work on multiple project I get asked this question by owners of firms from all sorts of discipline: Design; Engineering and Construction.
I get asked this question not that I am an Guru of the “little extra”. They ask me as I have informal “Lesson Learned on my project through out the project lifecycle. This prompts the question on “How can we better ourselves.
It is common in project management to just focus on the triple constraint of project management: Scope, Cost & Schedule with Quality in between. Nothing wrong with keeping track of them, it is needed to ensure project delivery meets client’s expectations.
One aspect that is forgotten in most projects is the client expectations of the intent – objective – of the project. In my role as an outsourced project consultant working on managing clients program and project delivery, I have the opportunity to work on multiple project at any given time and with teams of various sizes and people with diverse professional skills I find that besides managing the people and process it takes leadership to successfully deliver a project.
Yes, leadership is the little extra.
A very common perception is that a manager is a Leader. In a sense yes, yet it is not entirely true. The manager's job is to plan, organize and coordinate. Leadership is not about managing people; one can manage people but not demonstrate leadership at all. Very few managers have leadership trait. A leader could be a person who is just a manager of people. Leader draws people to them and inspire them and empower the followers to implement
” The leader's job is to inspire; motivate and empower.”
Leadership in project management is about driving change and cutting complexity – delivering projects through partnering – Partnering versus Managing. Our move from an Industrial Economy to a Digital economy has necessitated a change to how we deliver. Leadership in project requires open collaboration versatility, strong relationship building capabilities, ability to leverage industry contacts and crowd source ideas form the project team.
Leadership in project management is not just about minding the triple constraint through regular project reporting meetings. It is acknowledging that risk is an integral aspect of any project and willing to foresee these risk and tackle these risk.
Leadership in projects management is having a mature understanding of the project intent and the business objective of the project and having a clear picture of the project and owing the customer/clients issue Key to project leadership is flexibility in project delivery reacting swiftly to a rapid changing landscape and providing the client an enhanced project management – customer experience.
The difference between ordinary & extraordinary is just that little “extra”- little extra is Leadership which turns project management service into providing customer-centric personalized project management experience.
Leadership is that “little extra” in Project Management. What is your opinion on this? I would like to hear from you.