Project Managers are Integral to any Company… Including Yours
Posted on | June 10, 2011 | No Comments
From my vantage point, there is a greater sense of urgency among businesses today to bring project management expertise in-house to help organize and formalize the creation and roll-out of new projects. Generally speaking, large companies have a more immediate need to adopt project management (PM) as an essential approach to coordinating lots of moving parts and people involved in a new project or process. PM lends structure, milestones, agreed-upon goals, objectives, and timelines to hold all team members accountable. Having good team leaders involved in every project is essential, as well, or the project can break down from a lack of assertiveness and organization put forth by the leader to manage the work of a cross-functional team.
Why don’t more smaller companies use project management, or some derivation of PM, to make the project creation easier on them? I think there is a fear of the formality, that their staff will shy away from the work involved because it may take them away from how they manage their other responsibilities. Their own way of managing their work may be quite casual, and self-chosen based on their preferred way to move about their day. Project management has the stigma, and rightly so, that there are steps, check-ins, milestones, processes, and deadlines that are required in order for each team member to fulfill their responsibilities within the project. But what is forgotten by those who shrug off the idea of PM is they will more likely see greater, and more visible, return on their investment of time and work, and even better, they will see how their own contributions made a difference on the success of the project.
Bottom line is that Project Management isn’t an obstacle in the creative process. Project Management can enable the creative process to be realized in the form of successful outcomes from what otherwise may just be a handful of good ideas. That lack of organization and cohesion can make the project merely run in place. Any company can use PM to increase their rate of success in the delivery of projects.
As I pursue “project manager” employment at companies that leverage my online marketing background, I find that creative agencies, in particular, have grasped the project manager role as an essential member of their client marketing deliveries. Only, the PM (project manager) is not merely a paper-pusher as perhaps they once were defined. In the agency environment, the PM is the point-person within the team of cross-discipline members, managing timelines, budgets, and balancing client expectations with internal work. But more than that, the PM is a participant in the upfront brainstorm and scoping meetings, interfacing with the client to manage their ideas with those of the marketing expertise the client has hired the agency to leverage for them. Today, the project manager is an exciting role, and (non-agency) corporations, from small to large, would be smart to utilize the PM in a similar fashion: team leader as well as creative thinker.
The ideal project manager in any organization offers these 5 qualities:
- Superior Organization Skills
- Ability to Lead with Passion
- Multi-Tasker to the Highest Degree
- Creative, Quick Thinker
- Unafraid to Press the Team Members to Meet Expectations
Any company can use these skills in a team leader, and even if formal project management tools are not being used, I’d urge any company to select or hire a team member who possesses these qualities to guide their projects. Don’t just hand off a project to a couple people and ask them to meet the objective. There’s a lot between “start” and “finish” that can arise to throw the project off course, in which case you’ve invested a lot of man-hours into a project that will either go nowhere or not deliver on the objectives.
Tags: agencies > creative > marketing > project management > project managers
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