The future of people management on projects

Work is carried out in organizations by two means, by operations or by projects. In many organizations this distinction is not clearly recognized with a large middle-ground of un tracked work called ‘stuff’ or ‘ just doing it’. A very simple difference between the two is the one used by large banks called RTB (run the bank) for operational work and CTB (change the bank) for project work.

Companies like Cadbury Schweppes, Goldman Sachs and British Airways primarily make money from operations. While companies like Accenture, Bovis and Arup primarily make money from projects (sometimes called engagements). As you might expect world-class companies realize that in order to maintain and improve their position they need to be excellent in both areas.


There has been great improvement in both areas in the last 20 years. Operations work has improved by closer inspection of the processes (TQM, BPR, 6 Sigma etc) as well as the creation of a MBA qualified worker. Project work has been improved by a similar inspection of the process (PMBOK, Prince II, APM) as well as the creation of the certified project manager (PMP, IPMA, Prince II practioner).

Management theories for the 21st Century state that we should be able to improve the output or productivity of our knowledge workers in the same way as we increased the output or productivity of our production lines in the early 20th Century. Attempts to do this have primarily focused on giving the individuals greater knowledge (PhD, MBA, PMP, ..) , tools ( Email, Blackberry, IM, mobile phones..) and physical environment (natural light, Aeron chairs, food fitness and other services).
While these have been moderately successful the work environment has changed considerably with more work being carried out across functional, company and country boundaries – as documented in Thomas Friedman’s latest book ‘The World is Flat’ and many others.

Further improvement in the knowledge worker will focus on the role of the individual in the team environment and in particular on team selection and development. The team development theory (forming, storming, norming, performing, adjourning) put forward by Bruce Tuckman in the late 1960’s needs updating especially in the pre-forming stage with emphasis on assessment and selection of individuals.

We currently use many blunt theories and tools to assess, select and improve team performers and performance. These include, Myers Briggs, Belbin, DISC, for selection of personality type and team roles and Maslow, Hertzberg, McCelland, McGregor, etc for motivation and team development. Many unproven and out of date practices are still in vogue (e.g. NLP and many large companies in Germany still use Graphology (handwriting analysis))

While these theories are useful, they are not based on any scientific principles and therefore are as accurate as our primitive weathermen prior to the discovery and installation of the weather satellite.

“We used to think that our fate was in the stars – now we know, in large measure, that our fate is in our genes”
James Watson – Genome PM and co discoverer of DNA.

‘Ninety nine percent of the people don’t have an inkling about how fast this revolution is coming’ –
Steve Fodor, President of Affymetrix

While Thomas Friedman ‘was sleeping’ and the world became ‘Flat’ (in his words) another amazing revolution was taking place in the laboratories of the world concerning the Genome project. This was completed in 2003 and has provided a dam burst of information that will affect our understanding of what it is to be human and how we got here. A reflection of this is the sheer number of genetics related news items on the TV, radio and main pages of our national newspapers. The ‘Nature versus Nurture’ debate has been reopened with a ‘Nature via Nurture’ approach put forward by Matt Ridley and others.

Unfortunately for our HR managers this will mean a greater understanding of basic genetics, brain chemistry, and the scientific effects of nurture environments.

If we get this right and treat people management more as a science and less as a testing ground for fashionable but unproven theories then we can expect the following:

For the individual it will mean better career guidance and more satisfaction at work.
For the HR manager it will mean better interviewing and selection techniques and well as more cost effective team development activities.
And for the work environment it will mean more productivity and output per employee
For more papers on this subject see http://www.pmpulse.com/