Follow the (PM) Leader

Júnior Rodrigues, MSC, PMP is a Project Manager, Senior Consultant and Professor in Rio de Janeiro.

  Leadership  

Want to be a project manager? Just give it up!

You may think I’m crazy. How can a PM professional and teacher like myself say this? Keep calm! The point here is to get individuals who work (or want to work) with project management thinking about their current abilities—and the knowledge needs mandated by changes that are sneaking into the market.

More than ever, PM professionals need to focus on the soft skills (yet still never forget the hard skills). They must have a solid knowledge base of good practices, and be in line with what the PMI Talent Triangle^® proposes (project management techniques, business strategic management and, above all, leadership…where it gets more interesting, but I’ll talk about that later).

Having knowledge of strategic management in your business is important. The PM doesn’t necessarily have to be at the top of the organization, but he or she needs to know about the company and the specific area of strategy in which they are allocated. This enables the PM to know what must be achieved, including helping with project definition and prioritization.

The school of thought is that the corporate world is experiencing faster changes, and it takes more and more agility to cope with them in an exceptional way (in order to stay ahead of the competition and ensure competitive advantages). The PM professional should…

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