What does the typical, highly trained and experienced project manager have in common with a sack of coffee beans? More than you might think. Apart from the fact that you're likely to find either in all reaches of the world, the project manager is becoming yet another commodity in the global marketplace, taking his place alongside sacks of coffee, wheat, rice, and laptop computers. This is the downside of the tremendous advancements of the last twenty years in codifying the work of the project manager and in training people to be effective project managers. Project management has become less like art and more like science, and professional associations like the Project Management Institute are cranking out newly minted project managers just as fast as they can get them trained and certified.
There's some evidence that the process is working. Despite the fact that project work is becoming more complex, and that there is greater pressure to deliver better results sooner and cheaper, the percentage of projects that are deemed "successful" is actually increasing, though the rate is still disturbingly lower than it ought to be. More and more of the world's work is being cast as projects and the resulting demand for project managers will be addressed by further standardization and codification of project management processes. Project sponsors will look to the profession to meet the demand, and the profession will oblige by supplying project managers who are adequately trained and certified in these standardized and codified processes.
This commoditization is the first harsh reality that the project manager must face. It wasn't all that long ago that a project manager working for top dollar in a North American or European IT company thought him or herself to be immune from off-shoring, believing (and it was true for a brief while) that the difficulty of the craft would guarantee that his employer would want to keep project management "in house." The present reality looks different. As more and more of the work gets chunked up and sent overseas, more and more of the management of the work needs to take place overseas. As the offshore corporations mature, their employees gain experience and are themselves becoming trained and certified in standardized and codified project management processes. The project manager working in North America or Europe, as a commodity, faces being shipped to where the work is, or being replaced by less expensive local commodities. That's the second harsh reality the project manager must face.
One of the many consequences of these two realities is that the project manager is becoming an administrator and, in fact, as would be expected, the price for the project manager as a commodity is being bid down in world markets. There's another reality as well. Despite all the advances in making a science of the art of project management, there's one aspect of project management that seems to defy standardization and codification, and that is leadership. Here is where opportunity is to be found. For all the good that standardization and codification, training and certification have done, little progress has been made in the profession in the area of cultivating the leadership abilities of project managers. This is, in my view, why so many projects still fail.
Ultimately, all project work gets done by people-by people on project teams-and people need to be led. In sports, both amateur and professional, and in the military, leadership is given its due. In business, it seems, we want to manage rather than to lead. It's very telling that we call what we do project management and we call ourselves project managers. In point of fact, this is what we are and this is what all of this standardization, codification, education and certification are all about-management-the management of projects, and not the leadership of people. In business, as in sports and in the military, victory goes to the team with the most capable leader. A person who sees him or herself as merely a manager of projects will only ever be a manager of projects, a commodity in the global marketplace, who should never expect to have better success rates than contemporary statistics would indicate. On the other hand, by focusing on and cultivating leadership skills, by becoming a leader of project teams, one can avoid being commoditized, and can reliably, predictably, repeatedly lead project teams to succeed. Such a project leader will not only survive but prosper.
The decision to lead forces one to also consider what type of leader to become, and this is at heart of what Jack has to teach us. Jack's philosophy of leadership is one of service. Jack proposes that we go beyond being mere project managers, and even beyond being project leaders, to become service-based project leaders. It's a broad leap, in a profession that seems to be driving itself more and more toward "administration and management," rather than anything as bold as service-based leadership. Jack goes beyond merely articulating the imperative. He provides the insights and inspiration to make us want to make the transition, and also the tools to help us do so.
One can argue that service-based leadership makes good hard-headed, pragmatic business sense, and it does. It will keep the price for what you do from being bid down, and it will increase your ability to lead project teams to success. That ought to be reason enough. But my reasons for embracing and endorsing Jack's philosophy transcend the pragmatic and speak to who Jack is and who I am. It has to do with our world view, and our view of the people whom we serve when we lead project teams. It has to do with having a profound respect for each and every stakeholder, and our view of the role we strive to play in balancing competing interests while seeking to challenge and inspire our teams. Service-based project leadership is about creating and nurturing relationships and a sense of common purpose and commitment within the entire project stakeholder community.
Most importantly, Jack encourages and helps us all to begin or continue a fulfilling lifelong journey of personal growth, focusing, as leaders, on the human aspects of project work. He provides the roadmap, the vehicle and food for the journey-a journey that is in itself a destination. A journey we must start individually and collectively as a profession if we are to be relevant in the future.
The world is changing around us. We have an important choice to make. Become service-based project leaders ... or coffee beans.