Project Management today is seen as a development route to senior positions. So how do you develop tomorrow's project management leaders?
I spent Wednesday last week at Merrill Lynch at a conference looking at just that.

Here are some of the snippets I heard:

BAE Systems have a postgraduate certificate. This really focuses on understanding oneself and others before the core Project Management content. This is followed by a project at work to apply it all. Senior leaders are developed by coaching rather than courses. There were lots of questions around how to measure intangibles!

Geoff Reiss and Martin Price showed how Project Management has been seen to be all rules and process (eg PRINCE2 and PMBOK). However, great project managers are more than this. It is a bit like David Beckham - who doesn't just know the rules but is also a brilliant team player.
Geoff Reiss had a wonderful explanation of how process doesn't always ...

Is Project Management Creative?

Surely yes?

Here's the PMI's definition of a project:
A project is a temporary endeavour undertaken to create a unique product, service or result.

But when I spoke to some people in the video business recently, they were pretty unimpressed. They're creatives and we're... well, their impression of project people is that we're not. Their experience of project management training in particular left a lot to be desired. They almost gave up on finding appropriate project management training, which had been on their objectives for literally years. All they found was inflexible concentration on prescriptive, controlling processes and methodology.

What a pity! That says something about our too-narrow focus on the control of projects. Let's celebrate the exciting, creative aspect of our roles while embracing enough discipline and governance to ensure success. Making Projects Work Ltd. will ...

A couple of weeks ao, I attended a presentation on PRINCE2 at my local APM chapter. Rob Smith of PMProfessional Learning ran through what the current PRINCE2 structure is. [For those who don't know, PRINCE2 stands for 'PRojects IN a Controlled Environment' and focuses on the processes to control projects.] So what are the gems of ideas from PRINCE2 that we might want to borrow?

1. It's very logical. If you ever want a comprehensive and thought through process for change control or a list of all of the possible risk categories for your project, then the PRINCE2 manual is invaluable.
2. The idea of breaking a project into manageable chunks, which are then planned, managed and executed. These are called stages in PRINCE2.
3. Management by exception. Give people working for you tolerances and leave them alone (at least, don't micro-manage them!) as long as the results are within tolerance as they are delivered.
4. The business case must drive the project, so ...

I suppose that really it's no surprise to me that people-based project management comes into its own when there is a funeral to arrange.

One of the aspects that's been really important for my mother's funeral has been communicating with so many people from around the world. These include those living on boats all around the Atlantic, friends and relations from South Africa, Canada, New Zealand and beyond, as well as all those around Europe. This is where the web has come into its own, despite not everyone in Mum's generation being completely comfortable with it! Allowing people to add their own comments to make the communication two way has been a very important aspect of this.

Here's the page that I set up 

Well, it has been quite a week.

Last Monday, I was looking forward to running my first teleseminar on 'Conference Calls Made Easy'. Then I heard that my mother had died, suddenly, with absolutely no warning. After all, she'd sailed the Atlantic not once, not twice but three times over the last few years.

This means that the teleseminar is now going to run on Monday 14th April at 2pm. Register at www.conferencecallsmadeeasy.com if you'd like to attend or receive the recording afterwards.

Making Project Meetings Work - recently I've been touring the country speaking about how to do just this!

First stop was Derby on 21st January, with an interactive crowd of PMI delegates from companies across the Midlands. Apparently, two of them liked the session so much that they recommended me independently...

So on 29th January, last Tuesday, I presented a keynote at Manchester University! Thank you very much to both of the individuals (one from EDS and one from Rolls-Royce ) who enthused about my session to the Programme Director. The MSc course in Manchester is for practising project and programme managers. They take between three and six years to complete it part time, sponsored by their employee. Talking to one or two people over lunch, it struck me that they were making a huge investment of time and receiving in exchange a unique opportunity to reflect on and improve their practice.

'What really works for

On Monday, I met up with Vanessa Randle of Thinking Visually Ltd. She's a graphic recorder who does amazing visuals of conferences and meetings. We met a year ago and share a passion for the use of graphics with groups to help people (literally) see what they mean. Hand-drawn visuals on big paper is key to the way I work. It's so effective with groups - it's energising in a very visual age. It is my answer to 'Death by PowerPoint'.

We're working together to make sure that people out there who work with groups have access to these tools, whether they are trainers, facilitators, project managers or presenters. We're planning to give away an image library for free, image by image, fortnight by fortnight. Each image will come with a guide to drawing it and tips for using it. This will help people to build up their skills slowly but surely by practising easy but powerful graphic icons. ...

Just over a week ago, I helped out the Pearce Mayfield training team in a village near Wantage. It was great to meet up again with Andrew Rock, Patrick Mayfield and others I've worked with in the past. This group of PRINCE2 and MSP trainers work very hard to ensure that their training appeals to all our communication styles: visual, auditory and kinesthetic, much as I do with meetings. I facilitated a key part of their meeting, using tools such as a table-top group-drawn map and some very large pinboards. According to one of them: "I thought you did an excellent job with us last Friday." Good stuff.

It is rather fun applying trainers' own methods to themselves!

Project managers across the country (and the world) are getting busier and busier. There are more and more issues to face and complexities to deal with. My own work focuses on ways to support project and programme managers, and business analysts, as they grapple with the busy-ness and business of 21^st century projects and programmes of change. To help me keep my work relevant and focused on your needs, please comment with the issues around your project work that keep you awake at night. I promise to post a summary of what I’ve heard through all the channels of communication in January 2008! So, what are you up against at work?

Cheers,
Penny