DunEcology - Principle 1
|
Photo Credit: Warner Bros. In the previously referenced story from Fast Company, we know that “Frank Herbert’s masterpiece also helped Afrofuturist novelist Octavia Butler imagine a future of conflict amid environmental catastrophe; it inspired Elon Musk to build SpaceX and Tesla and push humanity toward the stars and a greener future; and it’s hard not to see parallels in George Lucas’s Star Wars franchise, especially their fascination with desert planets and giant worms. And yet when Herbert sat down in 1963 to start writing Dune, he wasn’t thinking about how to leave Earth behind; he was thinking about how to save it.” This blog series now shifts to discuss how project managers can learn from some of the basic principles from Dune and strives to connect what we do as project managers that can make us project leaders if we apply these principles. Since this blog posting is a series, I am going to hold off on the many ecological aspects and how they connect with project sustainability thinking, and instead focus on a Dune Principle of project leadership. Don’t worry: the environmental themes are too important to leave out – they will be covered! Dune Principle 1: Servant Leadership and Empathy One of the most important themes of the book (and the series, and the movies) is the way that the House Harkonnen rule Dune (the planet Arrakis, where most of the story takes place), compared with the way that the House Atreides operates. For those unfamiliar with Dune, a House is “a dynastic seat of power, sometimes limited to a world and sometimes spanning several worlds. Numerous Houses existed within the imperial hierarchy, and collectively they formed the Landsraad” What’s a Landsraad? It’s basically a council of landowners, except that ‘land” could mean one or more entire planets. The symbols (thanks to Dream Artworks) of the two Houses are shown below.
So how did the two Houses’ leadership styles differ? Ask the Fremen. Or, note the way that the Harkonnens are portrayed in the film. Well, in short, one could say that House Harkonnen used Command and Control, and House Atreides embraced Engage and and Empower – at least in general. Things do change in battle. This whole dynamic is actually the subtitle of good friend Gordon Mackay’s excellent book which I use in my course, Project Communications and Leadership at Boston University. You can find the book here, and as you read it, think of those two Houses. I’ll summarize a little bit below. In his book, Gordon says: “…‘project management’ is, increasingly, a contradiction in terms. Managerial ‘command and control’ does not inspire or, engage, nor does it foster the synergy of collaborative working. The function of delivery to cost, time, quality and scope remains. But, the function in delivery is to adopt a form fit for purpose in increasingly VUCA external and internal delivery environments. This chapter expands on the new function of project leadership – what it seeks to achieve as underpinned by relevant contemporary theory. It is followed by a structured approach for the aspirant and unctiong project leader to apply, in order to establish effective project leadership. The function of project leadership is to empower and facilitate the realisation of individual and team potential, and the emergence of collaborative team synergy. Just as the function and form of ‘stakeholder management’ shifts towards ‘stakeholder engagement’ , so too, now, successful project delivery requires a move from ‘project management ’ to a function and congruent form resulting in a fully ‘engaged’, collaborative team. What ‘engages’ the team, and all project stakeholders? Gordon has been a guest in my courses several times. A further example of his wisdom can be found in this one-hour video: This applies, of course, to project leadership, and it has not gone unnoticed in the world of overall HR and leadership. In fact, I found an excellent blog post which covers the Houses as well as the Bene Gesserit by Luis Querido, right here. Here’s Luis’ summary of the two Houses: “House Atreides exemplifies ethical leadership, characterized by integrity, honor, and a profound sense of justice. Duke Leto Atreides, the patriarch, is revered not only for his strategic acumen but also for his compassionate and principled approach to governance. He places a high value on loyalty, trust, and the well-being of his people, which in turn inspires deep loyalty from his subjects and followers. This leadership style underlines the importance of ethical considerations in decision-making and the long-term benefits of fostering a positive organizational culture.” House Harkonnen represents authoritarian leadership, marked by power, manipulation, and greed. Baron Vladimir Harkonnen’s rule is defined by fear, exploitation, and treachery, focusing on the accumulation of power and wealth at the expense of others. This approach highlights the dangers of leadership that prioritizes personal gain over the collective good, often leading to resentment, rebellion, and eventual downfall. The main character of Dune’s initial trilogy, Paul Atreides, spends much of his time building trust with the Fremen, through logic, authenticity, and empathy. NOTE: those very specific words come from this foundational article on trust-building, team-building, and communications-strengthening from the Harvard Business Review. It is in this way that he is able to build an alliance that will enable House Harkonnen to generate (spoiler alert!) an unlikely victory over House Harkonnen. Can your leadership style evolve from Command and Control to Engage and Empower? Watch the movie (or read the books) and consider if there is some learning there. I assert that there is. |
Projecticity
Categories:
project leader,
project leadership,
projecticity,
smart cities,
smart city,
power skills,
saudi,
jobs,
careers,
project
Categories: project leader, project leadership, projecticity, smart cities, smart city, power skills, saudi, jobs, careers, project
|
Image generated by incredibly thoughtful prompts from the author and the help of DALL-E The title of this post – projecticity, is a mashup of the words project and ‘electricity’… electricity in the sense of electrifying growth in PM career opportunities. Here, I continue the series on Project Management and Smart Cities. A new guest post is around the corner from Dr. Beverly Pasian, an expert in this area. However, given the projectmanagement.com focus on careers this month, I wanted to provide this post, focused (you guessed it) on the opportunities already here and coming along in the next few years for project managers (and project leaders) in the field of Smart Cities. I found a great resource from the Information and Communications Technology Council, Canada. It’s a summary of research on career roles based on the explosive growth of Smart Cities. Project management features heavily in it. One way that’s made obvious is that the word “project” appears 43 times in this 40-page document! The document (pictured below) can be found here or by clicking on the image below.
From this report, the focus was on five categories of roles:
I would argue that true project leaders are often working all 5 of these roles simultaneously. Like most reports of this nature, it begins with the promising growth of Smart Cities: Revenues from smart city projects worldwide are projected to grow from $116 billion (USD) in 2020 to $241 billion (USD) in 2025. 1 These initiatives, along with globalization, urbanization, and rapid digital disruption, will impact existing jobs and establish a demand for newly defined occupations in smart cities and beyond. In the research, the ICTC interviewed industry leaders in the Smart Cities area, whose overarching message was: “future skill needs will likely be centered around data and digital literacy combined with strong soft skills.” To expound further on this, The skills interviewees sought when building their teams included cross-disciplinary talent with technical skills combined with data analytics knowledge and an awareness of issues around privacy and ethics, and inclusivity and equity in technology design. In discussing cross-disciplinary talent, interviewees pointed to the need to overlap fields of study that have traditionally been more pursued in isolation. The theme of combining fields of study came up multiple times, with interviewees saying that a greater combination of technical and analytical skills and certifications (for example business along with engineering, or civil engineering and data science) would help prepare people for their department. Interviewees from one department had recently begun working on university partnerships, stating that such initiatives “provide students that key level of life experience that they need in the workforce.
In terms of certifications, as expected, Certified PMP® was one of only five certifications listed as desired, along with PE, MBA, Safety Professional and Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer. Amongst the Power Skills listed were (should sound familiar to project managers!):
The report (and others, like this one from BurningGlass, and this one from PMI) said that employers saw their skill requirements focused in the areas of
Listed under these human skills were:
To close this brief post, here’s an actual example of a job posting for a PMO leader for a Smart Cities initiative in Saudi Arabia: Job Title: PMO - Smart Cities Location: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia Overview:
Responsibilities:
|
Becoming a Climate Change Project Leader - Part 1
|
Image: Inc. Magazine In this two-part series of posts, I would like to point you to an excellent post made right here on Projectmanagement.com by Bruce Harpham. It’s entitled Climate Change: Micro and Macro Opportunities for Project Managers It begins: Climate change has arrived, and it is wreaking havoc across our world. The question now becomes: What can we do about it? There is no single correct answer to this complex question. The first step to coming up with solutions starts with understanding our situation. Bruce goes on to talk about the disappointment some of us share that although global warming or climate change has been a topic of discussion for a long time, not much has been done about it. Who are we? We are project managers*! Get-r-done people. Don’t you find this lack of action reprehensible? I do. I think that we as “Executors” (see Dr. Barbara Trautlein’s wonderful book on Change Intelligence) want to get stuff done. But there is an ironic twist here. We executors like to get things done on time, accomplishing scope, and doing all of this within budget. That often blinds us to thinking about the product of our project in the long-term - see the video at the end of this post for an example. Whatever it is that we build – whether it’s an app or a bridge or a new house-cleaning service, we want it to go live, carry traffic, and clean houses. Once that has started to happen, we do the old “wipe our hands” gesture and say, “now give me my next project!”. That means we have not thought through to the operation of our project’s outcome. Just that simple mind exercise, perhaps when doing risk identification, would make such a big difference in terms of making project outcomes sustainable.
But there’s a catch! Many of the changes to the product or service we may want to make, which consider sustainability and impact (social, economic, or ecological) have to please our sponsors and may, on their surface, seem to be too expensive, or may delay the release of the project. The project manager may be hesitant to raise these suggestions, partially due to a culture in an organization that makes it unsafe to speak up. This topic is enough for an entire series of blog posts, and in fact is an entire chapter in an upcoming DeGruyter book, The Handbook of Responsible Project Management. So I won’t follow that thread here; suffice it to say that it will take courage, supported by facts, supported by likely high-level commitments at the corporate level to Corporate Social Responsibility, to make these suggestions and, yes, perhaps delay the project or make the product or service more expensive, but to move the needle a little bit in terms of (for example) climate change.
In Part 2, I will take a look at Bruce’s point-by-point list of things we can do as project leaders and, for what it’s worth, add my opinion and angle on how you can make those a reality in your projects.
*I prefer (and am starting to assert the use of)"Project Leader" instead of project manager. Look up the list of traits and attributes associated with manager, then do the same for leader. You’ll see. Your title should be Project Leader. |
A Clean Start for the 2022 Project Leader
Categories:
project leader,
project leadership,
revisionist history,
podcast,
gladwell,
malcolm gladwell,
lifecycle,
washing machine,
LCA,
Leadership
Categories: project leader, project leadership, revisionist history, podcast, gladwell, malcolm gladwell, lifecycle, washing machine, LCA, Leadership
|
For our last post of 2021, I am going to leave your head spinning. Almost literally. It’s going to be short and sweet, but I am going to follow up with you in the clean new year. What’s all this about spinning…and cleanliness? I want to end 2021 by sending you to a podcast episode from Malcolm Gladwell. He has an OUTSTANDING podcast series called Revisionist History. I would say every episode is worth a listen. In its own words, here’s what the podcast says about itself: Revisionist History is Malcolm Gladwell’s journey through the overlooked and the misunderstood. Every episode re-examines something from the past — an event, a person, an idea, even a song — and asks whether we got it right the first time. Because sometimes the past deserves a second chance. The particular episode to which I implore that you listen (and then come back early next year for a discussion) is called Laundry Done Right. And yes. It is about washing your clothes. What the (insert bleep here) does this have to do with project management, you ask? Well, for the past 10 years or so, I have been giving talks about sustainability in project management in Italy, Costa Rica, South Africa, Canada, the USA, The Netherlands, Malaysia, and China. And I have been using the analogy of a washing machine as a way to get project managers to – well – to become project leaders, to think about delivering value rather than just producing outputs or outcomes. The analogy (not to give away the punch line) has to do with where the ecological value could come from in improving the whole process of washing your clothes. It's about a cycle, all right - but not a wash cycle - or at least not only a wash cycle. More next year - in other words, in a few days. Gladwell nails it in this episode. Give it a listen and I promise to connect this to sustainability thinking in project management (read that as project leadership) on the other side of 11:59:59PM, 31-December, 2021. Hope you enjoy it. HAPPY NEW YEAR! May all of your projects be successful, and deliver ongoing value! Cheers! Rich Maltzman, PMP
|
A Clean Start for the 2022 Project Leader
Categories:
project leader,
project leadership,
revisionist history,
podcast,
gladwell,
malcolm gladwell,
lifecycle,
washing machine,
LCA,
Leadership
Categories: project leader, project leadership, revisionist history, podcast, gladwell, malcolm gladwell, lifecycle, washing machine, LCA, Leadership
|
For our last post of 2021, I am going to leave your head spinning. Almost literally. It’s going to be short and sweet, but I am going to follow up with you in the clean new year. What’s all this about spinning…and cleanliness? I want to end 2021 by sending you to a podcast episode from Malcolm Gladwell. He has an OUTSTANDING podcast series called Revisionist History. I would say every episode is worth a listen. In its own words, here’s what the podcast says about itself: Revisionist History is Malcolm Gladwell’s journey through the overlooked and the misunderstood. Every episode re-examines something from the past — an event, a person, an idea, even a song — and asks whether we got it right the first time. Because sometimes the past deserves a second chance. The particular episode to which I implore that you listen (and then come back early next year for a discussion) is called Laundry Done Right. And yes. It is about washing your clothes. What the (insert bleep here) does this have to do with project management, you ask? Well, for the past 10 years or so, I have been giving talks about sustainability in project management in Italy, Costa Rica, South Africa, Canada, the USA, The Netherlands, Malaysia, and China. And I have been using the analogy of a washing machine as a way to get project managers to – well – to become project leaders, to think about delivering value rather than just producing outputs or outcomes. The analogy (not to give away the punch line) has to do with where the ecological value could come from in improving the whole process of washing your clothes. It's about a cycle, all right - but not a wash cycle - or at least not only a wash cycle. More next year - in other words, in a few days. Gladwell nails it in this episode. Give it a listen and I promise to connect this to sustainability thinking in project management (read that as project leadership) on the other side of 11:59:59PM, 31-December, 2021. Hope you enjoy it. HAPPY NEW YEAR! May all of your projects be successful, and deliver ongoing value! Cheers! Rich Maltzman, PMP
|
