The project manager has always been the crossbar within the enterprise organization - through all functional departments, combining tangible human and material resources with intangible intellectual resources to provide a clear target product (product or service). Playing the role of a project manager has different challenges from that of department functional supervisors, first, there is no long-term command (most of the personnel are transferred to the group, and most of them return to the team after the end of the project), second, there is no expert right (each team member has different specialties, and often the team members are experts in the field), third, there is no rich management experience (many are fledgling MBAs), and fourth, there is no reference right (domestic technology companies mostly use shallow and motivated personnel to serve as project managers). These situations are a frequent challenge for a project manager.
Looking back at the development process of a general functional manager, he/she often has a professional knowledge (expert authority) and then advances to a managerial position (command), when the first management challenge arises (i.e., the gap between the expert and the manager), he/she will start to learn about relevant management topics (e.g., go to EMBA), and then (if you are lucky) accumulate experience from the grassroots to the middle level to the senior manager. When taking over a cross-functional department, a new challenge is that the old expertise is gradually becoming invalid (even finding that the management experience of the past does not work, imagine the difference between the accounting department and the production unit or the R&D unit), and he/she will find that the leadership is to make up for the management shortcomings. That's why leadership programs are especially popular with senior or senior executives.
Compared with the cultivation of project managers, novice project managers almost always rely on enthusiasm (that is, the death rate of project managers is much higher than that of functional department heads), and exchange time for experience (so the PM of project managers often refers to the PM of the afternoon session). These "black hands" experience closest to the field are often dependent on the organizational culture and the project, and the value is accumulated in actual combat, and the disadvantage is that it is only effective "locally". As a result, over the years, PMP licenses have sprung up (currently there are nearly 13,000 PMPs in Taiwan – more than in the UK and Germany).
The PMBOK provides nine knowledge areas and five processes (I nickname it the Ninety-Five) as a common platform for project management, providing an effective, clear, systematic and common language, so it has become a sacred place for project managers to learn from their experiences. But as with the widespread introduction of EMBA programs at universities, Minzberg, in his book "The MBA ≠ Manager" or Strategist Strategist, calls for management education to return to the essence of management. (Interested readers can refer to another book, "A Day in the Life of a Manager"). Personally, I think the essence of what to return to is how to lead the crowd.
In contrast, project managers are strongly confronted with the topic of leadership from the outset, which means that in order to survive, they must learn about the topic early. If you agree that project managers should prioritize leadership, the next question is what and how?
The first thing to do is to clarify whether the goal of learning is whether it will help you in your work (not just a stack of more knowledge), which is the only way to look at all learning. It is not so much about learning leadership as it is about leadership, which can highlight the application of learning. The theory and application of leadership is also a manifestation (there are already 100,000 books on Amazon with the title "Leadership"), which also brings confusion to managers who are new to the leadership jungle.
This article is a series of explorations of leadership, with a particular focus on the applied aspects of project management, but not only full-time project managers, but also those who lead projects across functional departments, and even those who manage people (teams).
Article source: Manager
About the Author:
Coach Culture Expert/Constance Coach Joseph Lin Zuwei Wesley
Coach Lin Zuwei has both PMI project management license and ICF corporate coaching license.
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