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Project Management – not just sorting your thoughts out – more a way of life!

By Carole, Marketing Consultant on 04 August 2009 | Category: Design Industry 0 comments

My mother always used to say “tidy room, tidy mind!”. It isn’t true of course as we tend to get tidier as we grow up anyway - otherwise we can’t find the things that we need, when we need them.

However, that aside, I am interested in the development of project management (PM) as a ‘keeping things tidy’ function that makes business run more smoothly, generate the correct outputs in a timely way, as well as contributing positively to profitability – because it improves performance and focus.

If we assume that knowone is good at everything, but everyone is usually excellent at something, a division of labour, to ensure that people are allowed to concentrate on what they are good at makes sense. If you believe that wasted time in business is wasted profit, then it makes sense to ensure that people who find certain activities difficult and are therefore slower at them, are not required to do those things. For instance you wouldn’t expect someone who couldn’t spell to proof read, or someone who can’t communicate with people to sell your services. So why do we expect people to manage a whole job when parts of it are a complete anathema to them?

This is where project management can really add value to a business. So often small businesses expect people to be jacks-of-all-trades and master-of-none. Wake up! Poor performance invariably means poor profit. If you view PM as a means of ensuring that the staff and operatives – whether they be designers, sales people, senior managers or juniors – all need to have the best possible environment and information to perform to their optimum capacity, you will appreciate that “servicing” them with that information, the right equipment and prioritising their tasks, or even providing a cup of coffee occasionally, will induce higher productivity.

Good “project managers” simply take a lot of the stress out of other people’s jobs! By being systematic, good, assertive communicators and focusing on priorities they enable people to perform. Even clients/customers can reap the rewards because they are guided, informed and managed towards the same goal, at the right time, and are empowered by understanding the processes that are needed to deliver what they need as an output. In most cases people who are commissioning specialist items or services don’t know what is required to actually deliver that service. As a result they find it difficult to value it. If they understand more they appreciate the costs better.

Think of your project manager as a guiding hand, a facilitator and potentially a big profit generator. Trust them, value them and empower them to make you money – by saving all your technical, creative and management staff precious time, focusing on the right tasks at the right time and making sure that no balls fall on your head – and most importantly, no customers are let down!