The ProjectManagement.com Style Section

 

In the New York Times style section from September 29, Brian Lombardi has an article entitled “27 Ways to be a Modern Man.”(i)  Some of this piece I find interesting, while other parts are just loopy. For example, Lombardi asserts that his envisioned Modern Man will own a melon baller (ii) . I don’t even know what that is, which, I suppose, means I’m either not modern, or not a man, by Lombardi’s standards. (I’m assuming that it’s not a device that enables watermelons, honey-dew melons, and cantaloupes to be shaped like softballs, just in case a Modern Man wanted some messy bat-practicing fun. I could be wrong.)

Along those lines, though, I was wondering what I would consider to be a “Modern Project Manager.” After all, isn’t that the point of any certification program, to help potential employers ascertain who has the talent to contribute to a present-day project team, and who might not? So, without the formality of a proper certification criterion document, I’ll offer up a quick talent-discerning checklist for what makes up the “Modern Project Manager.”
1.    The Modern Project Manager has a reliable information stream that tells her how her project is performing in cost and schedule space…
2.    …and this system is not based on either the general ledger, or what the company’s accountants are telling her.
3.    If the Modern Project Manager blogs, he alternates between personal pronouns – none of this “his or her” business.
4.    The Modern Project Manager will not initiate a complex risk analysis or risk management system, nor inflict an existing one on his project team.
5.    But, if the customer is in to that kind of thing, then the Modern Project Manager will gladly provide the results from whatever analysis said customer desires to see. 
6.    The Modern Project Manager attributes his teams’ successes to them, and their failures are automatically attributed to him alone.
7.    Sadly, the Modern Project Manager is fluent in all aspects of human resources law and regulations, even at the expense of assimilated knowledge of the technical nature of the work in front of her. This has become a necessary capability in the overly-litigious world of modern business, both in order to ensure that the project team does not create or maintain an “environment” that any employee would believe to constitute harassment, and to better deflect any frivolous complaint against the project team.
8.    Construction PMs may be used to communicating with walkie-talkies, Information Technology PMs with e-mail, and far-flung PMs via video conferencing. But how many people actually know what a heliograph is? (It’s a device that uses signaling mirrors to communicate over distance, used in place of telegraph lines in the early 1900’s.) At the time, the heliograph was considered fairly advanced, and yet in 2015 the only examples of it are in museums. The point? Communications technology is among the fastest to advance. The Modern Project Manager knows how to text and/or tweet (and, in 2130, business students may dig this article up and point to it, saying “Look at this! Can you believe they used to have to rely on text messages? Also, what’s an e-mail?”)
9.    That having been said, brand-new technology is rarely economical to use on a large scale. The Modern Project Manager does not cling to outmoded approaches, nor does she seek out trendy but unproven technology. Selecting this precise mix of innovation versus tried-and-true technical approaches is the hallmark of the successful Modern Project Manager.
10.    And, of course, the Modern Project Manager logs on to ProjectManagement.com on a regular basis, and makes it a point to read a certain blogger…

  (i) Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/02/fashion/mens-style/27-ways-to-be-a-modern-man.html?_r=1 on October 3, 2015, 13:49 MDT.
 (ii)  Ibid.