- steps for adapting your organisation the ‘Single-Minded Way’,
through project players’ behaviour
There can be no doubt that the behaviour of people and their organisation are the primary drivers of a project’s pace of progress and success. Methodology, tools and techniques are vital but these are subordinate to the impact of human endeavour. This is because the selection, deployment and application of methods depend entirely on the abilities and judgment of the project’s players. Performance ultimately rests on knowledge, resolve, skill, organisation and collaboration exercised within a project management community.
What counts most of all in securing the success of any project are the choices made by players in deciding what is to be done, the way that it is to be done and how the plan will be revised in the light of circumstances. This defines the quality of project management.
Peter Morris, Professor of Construction and project management at University College, London claims that “Projects ultimately are managed by people. Not systems, not contracts – people. People working in organisations, doing jobs, operating systems, preparing plans, deciding and communicating.”
Project’s players – all those who share responsibility for a project’s results; will find themselves in places and circumstances that they could not have anticipated. Such situations call for thoughtful, skilful and spirited dialogue; building on what must always be a limited comprehension of the issues.
Project players have to be able to accommodate uncertainties, ambiguity, controversy and critical choices. They need also to be able to rely on the discernment of colleagues in a mature professional organisation and community.
There is a distinction to be drawn between the formal methods, tools and techniques of project management and the behaviour of the project’s players.
A project’s pace of progress relies on its players’ determination to succeed and the choices that they make; both individually and collectively. The quality of those choices depend on the project players’ conduct as a community.
It’s not just the methods; it’s the means of their delivery
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