A Guru's Approach to Project Management

Bob Weinstein is a journalist who covers technology, project management, the workplace and career development.

 

Project management could use more qualified gurus, if for no other reason but to solidify PM ideas and theories. Dave Schrader (better known as eDave Schrader in the tiny guru community) and Bob Sutton (dubbed "The idea machine" by CIO Insight magazine) are the real deal.

Schrader is director of strategy and marketing at Teradata, a data warehouse company in Dayton, Ohio, and Sutton is the author of Weird Ideas That Work (The Free Press, $26) and a professor at Stanford University's engineering school.

In his own way, each man is a PM expert. Schrader is a senior project manager who can perfectly architect projects from concept to completion. In a consulting capacity, Sutton has been involved in what he calls the "bowels of projects," observing the strengths and weaknesses of project management.

But what's a guru?

"A guru is a futurist," Schrader explains. The estimated 3,000 gurus nationwide can exist in any part of an organization: technology, sales or marketing.

Beyond mapping a project's best path and overseeing the teams that execute it, gurus can explain what's coming and translate it into a trend. "This helps us evolve a product and take advantage of opportunity," says Schrader.

On the negative side, "a guru is someone who gets you all excited but doesn't provide enough information about how to implement ideas," Sutton counters. "A guru should …

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