Personal Projects and the Coordinated Management of Meaning

 

I've been spending the last six months researching the theories of "personal projects" and the "coordinated management of meaning."  I started this research because of my work at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management on employee engagement. Rather than go the usual route of research, I wondered if there was an alternative based on the changing workplace. Especially the shift toward a project-oriented environments.

Dr. Little's personal project theory seemed perfect. Personal projects are things like people vowing to lose ten pounds or learn a second language. Most people have 15 to 20 personal projects going on at any given time. By analyzing these personal projects, we can better understand what motivates the person.

Understanding motivations is also why I consider pairing Dr. Pearce's coordinated management of meaning (CMM) with personal projects. CMM essentially describes how people construct meaning through a series of communication episodes. I consider this especially relevant to how projects are communicated to project teams and stakeholders.

It is my belief that understanding the personal projects a person chooses and how they communicate these projects to others is the key to understanding what motivates a person. By aligning organizational projects with personal projects, employees will feel more engaged at work. I'm still in the early stages of my research but so far, my thesis is holding up.