Project Management

3 Things to Remember When Giving Career Advice

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

We all know that project managers are people leaders. But do we recognize just what that entails?

Over the years, I have worked with a lot of people on more teams than I can possibly remember. Occasionally, there were team members who were assigned to a project against their will, and who made it clear that they didn’t want to be there. But that hasn’t happened very often, and usually only when there is only one person capable of doing a specific task.

Resource owners recognize that it’s not good for the project, or the individual, to assign someone who doesn’t want to be involved. As a result, most of the people working on projects are enthusiastic about the opportunity (or at least not actively against it). In my experience, that means that a higher-than-normal percentage of project team members are actively seeking to grow and develop their career. They see projects as a good way to achieve that.

In many cases, they’re right. Projects provide an opportunity to work with different people, to be exposed to other areas of the organization, and to see a different way of how work gets done. Even if an individual has no desire to pursue a project-based career, the experience and skills learned on projects is highly valuable.

That has implications for project managers. It means that, at least for the period of time that people are assigned …


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My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.

- Woody Allen

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