The right mix

So what does it take to be a complete project manager? It’s easy enough to recognise one. Things happen around them. They are in touch and in control. The sense of purpose and achievement is palpable. But how do we create them? Do we wait to see if they’ll come good, or watch sadly while their project drifts into failure, a day at a time?

Some believe that it is all down to what they know. There are training programmes and companies that sell this idea and indeed use terms like being an accredited project or programme manager, as if knowing about project management makes you a project manager. This is a weak version of the ‘blank slate’ theory, which suggests that anyone can become a project manager – all it takes is the right environment and training.

Others believe that it takes more. It is a combination of knowledge, skill, experience and attitude, and it is how these different elements are brought together and brought to bear on the management enterprise that distinguishes successful project managers from others. Clearly knowledge has a role, but it is its application that matters. So skill, the appropriate application of techniques, matters. Yet, it is making sensible choices, giving appropriate emphasis that creates success. And attitude – the beliefs, values and sensitivity to ambient factors – is critical. Our research clearly shows all of them matter, with experience being a better predictor of future performance than any one of the others.

This multi-factor model of what makes a complete project manager has a number of consequences. The most obvious is that not all people can be project managers. (Our research shows that just over 30 per cent of individuals will never become adequate project managers, and less than 12 per cent will be excellent ones.) The second is that accreditation, which is based on demonstrating knowledge, on its own may give a false picture of project competence.

The solution for project managers is professionalism. We must distinguish between qualifications that focus on developing aspects of attitude, as well as developing skills and experience, and accreditation to techniques. We must not lose sight of the value of apprenticeship to the profession – individuals being exposed to ‘knowledge in action’.

At all levels this formula provides the greatest chance of success when taken from the classroom environment into the workplace, and is the basis of our management development programmes and our postgraduate certificate in managing major projects.