Inspired

I recently read an article about great achievements from 2022: The Atlantic’s The 10 Most Promising Breakthroughs of the Year by Derek Thompson. I was encouraged in reading this about the breadth and impact of work accomplished, and I thought about all of our work as project managers. In the great accomplishments, such as those outlined in the article, many hands play a part. And in such teams, project managers are often the orchestrators. We may not be the inventors or scientists, or discoverers noted in headlines, but we’re the cat herders, naggers and risk assessors, stewarding the vision alongside teams accomplishing great things.

As with stories featured in the 2022 breakthroughs, effective work in project management is inspired and informed by faith, endurance and esteem…?

1. Faith - It takes faith to see the end from the beginning. So much of project management is problem-solving, and in that, we are often eyeing down the problems themselves, often with no obvious or immediate fix. Like for those breakthrough-makers, it takes faith for PM’s to hang in there with projects and project teams in hope of a future vision.
2. Endurance - The excitement of the planning phase of a project soon peters out during the day-to-day grind of getting through it – the tasks, the meetings, the do-overs. Project management helps provide the structure that enables teams to endure to the end.
3. Esteem - So much work starts as a labor of love. When the grind can be daunting, often we as project managers are inspired by our commitment to teammates to go the extra mile so that we all together can see the vision fulfilled. Or we are working on projects that make a difference for others, which keeps us going. Love will often succeed when our strength fails.

While only few of us project managers would be working on world-renowned breakthrough projects, it’s a privilege in our role to partner with teams in a variety of industries and endeavors; we work from vision imagined to vision fulfilled to help others see the light at the end of the tunnel as we achieve great things together.