Essential Power Skills (Part 3): Do You Have Clarity of Purpose?
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.
Today’s project managers are increasingly expected to have an understanding of the business outcomes that their projects are expected to achieve. It’s no longer sufficient to deliver on time, scope and budget, there must also be consideration given to ensuring that the solution developed can be leveraged to deliver on benefit. I view this as an important development that will help projects to better support the needs of the business, but it doesn’t come without its challenges.
We increasingly talk about the need for project managers to be more strategic in their thinking (it's one of the top skills in the new PMI report Pulse of the Profession® 2023: Power Skills, Redefining Project Success), but what does that really mean? We know it refers to those business outcomes, and to helping the organization achieve the goals and objectives that have been established for the year. But how can a PM make a direct connection between those rather abstract concepts and the work that they do every day? And more importantly, how can they help their teams make that connection?
Clarity of purpose
There are many possible approaches, and no shortage of advice out there. But in this article, I want to focus on just one term: clarity of purpose. That’s exactly what it sounds like, a clear understanding of why—in this case, why the project is …
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"All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure." - Mark Twain |
