7 Steps to Become a Polymath PM

Lonnie Pacelli is an Accenture/Microsoft veteran with four decades of learnings under his belt. He frequently writes and speaks on leadership, project management, work/life balance, and disability inclusion. Reach him at [email protected] and see more at ProjectManagementAdvisor.com.

  Career Development  

I had a discussion with a young man who, three years after graduating college, still did not have a job. I asked him what he wanted to do for his career. “I want to be a Renaissance Man,” he said.

Now, aside from the fact that it’s been a while since I’ve heard someone refer to themselves as a Renaissance Man, I envisioned someone much older and wiser, not a twenty-something young man. So I did some digging on the definition of “Renaissance Man/Woman” and stumbled across a word I’d never heard before:

Polymath.

Dictionary.com defines Polymath as a person of great learning in several fields of study. The word originates from the Greek polymathḗs, which translates to “having learned much.”

This got me thinking about how I, as a PM and leader, strive to be a person of great learning in several fields of study. The interesting word here is learning. It’s not about being a final authority, knowing all there is to know. Instead, it’s about being a student who develops expertise but continues to learn about both existing and new fields of study.

For the project management discipline, I call that person the Polymath PM.

If you agree with my Polymath PM moniker and see the need to work on becoming a Polymath PM, continue reading for some ways to help you on the journey:

1. Identify complementary …

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