Empowering Next-Gen PMs: Share, Don’t Teach

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.

  Leadership   Teams  

I’m at an awkward age where I am constantly reminded that I’m not young anymore, and I get grumpy at all the reminders that I’m not young anymore. Take PMI’s new report on Building and Leading High-Performing Teams as an example. That would seem like a safe read, but then I get to the section on empowerment:

“While millennials (ages 27 to 42 in 2023) now represent a majority of the global workforce, Generation Z is approaching fast, on pace to make up 27% of the workforce by 2025, according to a 2023 Zurich Insurance report.”

I’m part of Generation X, and let me tell you, that’s just downright depressing. I still like to think of myself as the young PM who was often younger than all his team members, but it turns out that was several decades ago. But, not wanting to dwell on the past (or at least, that’s what I’m telling myself), my thoughts have to turn to how I can do my bit to ensure that the next generation of project professionals are empowered to be successful.

And I’m not sure. I suspect that people have been saying that since before the wheel was invented, but the technology landscape has changed so much over the space of my working life that it really is a different world.

As proof, the first office I worked in was a small rural branch of an English high street bank where the only computers …

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