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by Cyndee Miller

Project leaders aren’t exactly known as rebels.

And Luke Williams pulled no punches on why that needs to change, calling out project and program managers as frequent barriers to anything beyond incremental change. Too often, he said, they stick to established systems.

“Project management can exacerbate this path dependence,” the New York University professor said in his closing keynote at PMO Symposium. “You’re the ones enforcing this path.”

There’s far too little emphasis on delivering discontinuity, he said, which puts most organizations in a bad spot: Complacency is literally the most dangerous attitude in business.

So go ahead, chuck the best practices and traditional success measures and embrace your inner rebel. Forget reasonable predictions. Go for unreasonable provocations‪, Mr. Williams told attendees.

In his eyes, that’s the biggie: The most important thing a project leader does is manage the organization’s ideas. 

Not every idea is going to work—there are bound to be some spectacular flameouts. So he encouraged project leaders to give themselves and their teams permission to be wrong.

That mindset can admittedly be a wee bit unsettling. But if you're going to commit to disruptive change, he said, your job is not to make everyone happy—it’s to make everyone uncomfortable.

The upside, according to Mr. Williams: Truly unexpected ideas have less competition—which means a longer lead time for execution and a stronger chance of success.

Who’s ready to embrace their inner rebel?


Posted by cyndee miller on: November 16, 2018 03:46 PM | Permalink

Comments (12)

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Eduin Fernando Valdes Alvarado Project Manager| F y F Fabricamos Futuro Villavicencio, Meta, Colombia
Thanks for sharing

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Paul Boudreau President| Stonemeadow Consulting Kanata, Ontario, Canada
Good inspiration. It is always a struggle to know how far to push the organization

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Drew Craig Sr. Agile & Product Coach| Vanguard Philadelphia, Pa, United States
Nice, Cyndee. Thanks!

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Rami Kaibni
Community Champion
Senior Projects Manager | Field & Marten Associates New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada
Nice post Cyndee, thank you.

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Al Taylor I.T. Contractor| Independent Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
How does Luke Williams earn the right to say this? "calling out project and program managers as frequent barriers to anything beyond incremental change. Too often, he said, they stick to established systems." And “You’re the ones enforcing this path.” Does he present any evidence?

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Markus Kopko AI Enabler for Project & Program Mgmt | Founder PMotion.ai / The PM AI Coach| PMotion.ai Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
Thanks for sharing

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Sante Delle-Vergini, PhD Senior Project Manager| Infosys Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
I've known plenty of rebel PM's; I might be one of them...

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Jack Davenport Richmond, Tx, United States
With regard to those established systems, they can just as easily be used to deliver disruptive change as they can for delivering complacency. As I believe the point was made, the difference maker (in what is delivered) is largely influenced by the mindset and attitude of the PM.

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RAJESH K L Project Manager, PMP| Bharat Electronics, Bengaluru, India Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
Thanks for sharing

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Symon Thelappillil Technical program manager| Intel Technology India Pvt Ltd. Bangalore, Karnataka, India
To rebel is easy. But are we rebelling to make a change or disengage? Latter is not preferred. Rebellion should be for change, adopting Agile practices would be a rebelling for change from standard process and policies

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Frederic Casagrande PMO Expert Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Heard yesterday at the Dubai International Project Management Forum: "thinking is now a daring act!" ... totally relate to this post!

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William M Hayden Jr Adjunct Assistant Professor| University at Buffalo, School of Management, Operations Management & Strategy Buffalo, Ny, United States
Well, based only on the remarks posted by Cyndee Miller above, it feels to me that while the topic and points Ms Miller notes may have caused some chatter at the conference session, it offers little value within the framework of the management of projects.

HOWEVER. . . outside the domain of project life, it would be a great way to stimulate open dialogue to challenge the beliefs and habits that currently form the principles and practices of the management of projects. Once such an experiment concludes with change to parts of the system for the management of projects, sensible, limited pilot application of such new theories would be warranted.

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