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Teach and Institute Leadership

July 21, 2007 | Author: admin | Filed under: Quality Management, Techniques

Teach and Institute Leadership (#7 in the series Deming’s 14 Points in Project Management)
By Josh Nankivel

Dr. W. Edwards Deming recently re-introduced to me in my Project Performance and Quality Assurance class. I have heard of him before and touched on some of his philosophy in other classes, but focused much more in-depth this time. The majority of his philosophy around quality and organizational management resonate with me. So, I’ve decided to do a series of articles on Deming’s 14 points, and how they relate specifically to the field of project management. I may decide to not touch on all of them or I may. I am not really sure at this point.

It is the age-old distinction that usually merits much lip service and little true implementation. There is supervision/management, and then there is leadership. Project managers can either be supervisors or leaders, regardless of their job title.

Supervising/managing is simply overseeing and directing work. If you know everything about PMBOK and other methodologies, but practice project management like a robot within that knowledge, you are supervising, not leading. Another interpretation is a primary tactical focus with the long-term picture being a secondary consideration, if that.

Leadership is providing guidance to help employees to their jobs better with less effort. It’s all the elements of training, example-setting, continuous improvement of systems, etc. together. You don’t have to be a charismatic person to be a great leader, there is much more to it than dynamism and likability. You do have to do the above, and have a long-term lens through which you look at everything you and your teams do.

Organizations who want to have great leaders as project managers should be training them to be great leaders, so in a way this is a correlate of Point 6. Part of the training regimen needs to be leadership. Upper management needs to consist of people who are lifelong learners and students of leadership philosophy. They should be passing down that knowledge to their project managers and other employees in a formalized manner, and on a regular basis.

Josh Nankivel is the Vice Chair of Special Projects for the Students of Project Management SIG of PMI, and a project management student/enthusiast. His website is http://www.pmstudent.com.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, July 21st, 2007 and is filed under Quality Management, Techniques. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

1 person has left a comment

Hi, Gurus,

Is there any good leadership experience shared here?

Thanks.

Bosson

Bosson wrote on July 22, 2007 - 4:51 am | Visit Link

feel free to leave a comment

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