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Date
In the prior blog post, I posed a question, and asked your opinion about whether or not project management - and project managers - should think more broadly about the products of their projects.
The trigger for my question was a negative comment (well, I saw it as a negative comment) about our discipline, stating that PMs should stop 'inflating their roles'.
The feedback here (and on LinkedIn, which had a parallel post) was significant, in volume and thoughtfulness.
Some of you seemed to agree with the 'inflationary' comments, and some took the view that a project manager, indeed, should step up and speak up about the long-term effects (social, environmental, economic) of even design decisions, even product-oriented decisions, even seemingly way-past-the-project-handoff effects that you anticipate as a project leader.
I respect all of these views, and I thank you for them.
And the thing is, this discussion has reminded me why we started doing this work in the first place, and that our work is nowhere near done. One of the most interesting things about the responses from colleague project managers who seem to think that we have to 'keep in our place', 'keep our nose to the grindstone", and "just think about project deliverables" is that they are not in line with the thinking of enterprise leadership, and even the investment companies believe.
See this report:
http://sloanreview.mit.edu/projects/investing-for-a-sustainable-future/
I'll be covering this report in more detail in a future post, but consider this logic:
- Project managers are indeed responsible for delivering projects.
- Projects are meant to be aligned with the mission/vision/values and strategies of the enterprise.
- Enterprise leaders, and their sponsors (investors) are driving sustainable decision-making.
- So... (follow the logic?) project managers should be making project decisions (and even assertions) that are connected to the enterprise strategies.
Look for a follow-up post on this MIT Sloan/BCG report and other supporting findings that continue to energy us to focus on this very important intersection of project management and sustainability.
Posted
by
Richard Maltzman
on: September 30, 2016 09:57 PM |
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