Exercising Agency

Mark Mullaly is president of Interthink Consulting Incorporated, an organizational development and change firm specializing in the creation of effective organizational project management solutions. Since 1990, it has worked with companies throughout North America to develop, enhance and implement effective project management tools, processes, structures and capabilities. Mark was most recently co-lead investigator of the Value of Project Management research project sponsored by PMI. You can read more of his writing at markmullaly.com.

  Decision Making   Leadership   Strategy   ProjectsAtWork  

When it comes to project initiation decisions, does your organization follow a rational, considered process? Most projects are beholden to politics, proceeding as the result of advocacy, persuasion and bargaining. And it is often the committed actions of an individual project “shaper” who wields the greatest influence on any given project’s approval.

This article is the first in a new series based on the author’s book Exercising Agency: Decision Making and Project Initiation (Gower Publishing; 2015).

The decision to initiate a project is a critical one. It is also a seldom-examined area, living in a middle space between strategy on one hand and project management on the other. Given the critical role of projects in implementing strategy, knowing the influences on what projects are initiated is important to understand. Understanding in particular the personal dynamics of project initiation decisions is essential from a number of perspectives.

First, while most organizations profess to have a rational and well-considered process of project initiation, this is rarely the case. What research has demonstrated is that few organizations have a robust, effective process that leads to what are consistently seen as good project initiation decisions. Many more organizations have ineffective processes (or ones that exist in name, but have little influence in actual …

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