I am a lifelong project manager with some 40 years of project management experience under my belt, most coming from construction project management.
Over the years, I had noticed that some people are just naturally better project managers than others. Looking back over the years, it didn’t seem to matter whether they were engineers, nor did it matter if they were men or women, and having spent most of my life working around the world, it didn’t seem to matter what country they called home or what language they spoke or how they worshiped their God. It also didn’t seem to matter what astrological sign they were born under, nor did it appear obvious that those who were naturally good carried lucky talismans.
And most certainly, it didn’t matter if they did or did not have their PMP, PRINCE2, MBA or PhD behind their name!!
So what was that elusive “something” that made some people just “natural” project managers?
As I began my PhD research, trying to answer the question “Is project management a profession? And if not, what is it?” I intended to include part of that research a chapter on behavioral attributes, but as with most projects, time and quality constraints won out and I had to “descope” and the part that got descoped was the research about behavioral attributes.
Behavioral Attributes Rise From The Dead
But that was only a temporary diversion, and now, PhD in hand, I am resurrecting my interest in the behavioral attributes.
To start with, I relied on previous research done by my good friend and mentor, R. Max Wideman. Max chose to use Myers Briggs, and his research proved not to be sufficiently detailed for the work I had in mind. http://www.maxwideman.com/papers/profiles/myersbriggs.htm
So my quest for something more granular finally turned up a Dr. Dan Harrison, and his Harrison Assessment. http://www.harrisonassessments.com/ Unlike Myers Briggs or Kiersey, the HA Instrument tested for some 155 different behavioral attributes. Furthermore, HA has a feature that measures the CONSISTENCY of the responses, which provides and accurate measure of how truthful the respondent is being, or are they trying to game the system. Having found what I was looking for, I contact Dr. Dan and he suggested I contact his regional representative, Mr. John Suermondt, john@harrisonassessments.com and work with him at least in setting up a pilot. John is originally from the Netherlands, a former commercial diver, now living in Perth, Australian and a really dynamic and cool global kinda guy. And with over 19 years working with Harrison Assessments and was just as excited as I was to pilot this.
All of the participants in the pilot study came from people in the various in-house classes that I teach for our Fortune 500 clients. These classes were either the PMP or CCC/E Prep, or in my graduate level university classes at either ESC Lille Masters of Science in Project Management http://esc-lille.audaxis.com/en/Programmes/MS_MSc/Project_Management_Supply_Chain_Organisation/Specialised_Master_in_Project_and_Programme_Management or the University of Western Australia’s Masters of Energy Systems or the Masters in Petrochemical Engineering degree. http://www.blendedlearning.ecm.uwa.edu.au/
Project Manager Pilot Group
What I did was select a pilot group of 28 practitioners who were deemed “successful” project managers. In order to be deemed “successful” they had to pass three tests:
- They had to hold the job title of “Project Manager” in their company
- They had to have demonstrated to me in the classroom environment that they had exceptional leadership skills (top 5% of the class) and
- They had to have at least 5 years of working experience
This initial pilot study group of 28 consisted of:
- exactly half men, half women;
- about 30% were Muslim
- about 10% were Hindu or Budhists
- remaining 60% were Christian
- 9/28 = 32% Asian
- 6/28 = 21% North American
- 5/28 = 18% Australian/New Zealand
- 5/25 = 18% European (including Eastern Europe, Northern Africa and Turkey)
- 3/28 =11% Central or South America
The industries they represented were:
- Oil, Gas or Mining 9/28 = 32%
- Telecommunications or IT 9/28 = 32%
- HR, Sales or Marketing 5/28 = 18%
- International Development 3/28 = 11%
- Finance 2/28 = 07%
The test was facilitated by John and administered on line (it only takes about 20 minutes) and in all cases, it was conducted in English, although the instrument has been translated into some 15 languages.
Results
Tune in tomorrow for the second part of this series, with the results including predictors, desireable traits, and undesireable traits for project management success!
Continue reading