The Passionate Project Manager

My colleague, Doug DeCarlo, and I were having a conversation yesterday about self-mastery and project management. Doug is the author of xTreme Project Management (Jossey-Bass), and we have had many hours of discussion about these topics. In this conversation, we were talking about training people to be project managers, and lamenting the poor transfer of learning to the job that we have witnessed in our combined 45+ years of teaching. We know that very few people actually apply what we teach back at work, and we also know there are many reasons for this: lack of support by the individual's boss, resistance to project planning by members of the project team, and simple inertia--it's easier to continue doing what you've always done than to try something new.

However, in this discussion, Doug said, "I'll bet that 80 percent of the people who attend our training programs don't really feel passionate about being project managers. They are there because it's a chance to make more money, or the boss sent them, or whatever. But they aren't passionate about managing."

I had never really thought about it that way. I do agree with Doug. As Bob Wysocki and I wrote in World Class Project Manager, many of us are accidental project managers. We didn't choose the job. We were in the wrong/right place at the wrong/right time (depending on how you look at it), and became project managers. But do we LOVE what we do? Many do not.

In thinking about this, I realized that when I have gone to training programs that I have chosen for myself, you can bet that I internalized what was taught. A good example is when I became certified to use the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI(R)), which measures a person's preference for thinking in four different modes. I was fully engaged. I was energized. I absorbed everything the instructor said, as best I could. And I immediately applied what I learned.

The same was true in the year that it took for me to become a certified Integral Coach (R). This program consisted of four sessions of four-days duration--one each quarter, held in San Francisco. They ran from 8:30 AM until around 7 PM on Thursday-Sunday. They were intense. Even lunch was a working lunch. And in the evening we had homework. Hard work, to be sure. But did I love it? Absolutely! It was a wonderful experience.

Now I would like to challenge you with this question: Why are you a project manager? Is it because you really, really, really want to do the job, or is it because it was the next rung on the corporate ladder, leading to higher pay?

I can tell you that when I was an engineer, designing radio equipment, I loved my work. I lived and breathed it. I was at work early and stayed late, most of the time huddled over a workbench constructing and testing my designs. But then they made me a project manager, and I could no longer spend full time on the bench. It was the beginning of the end of my passion.

I am being totally candid when I tell you that I absolutely love teaching people how to be project managers, but I also do not like being a project manager. My two passions are creativity and helping others grow and develop. I am at home in the classroom. I would teach if I weren't getting paid (if I didn't need the income). And my personal view is that life is too short to spend doing something that you aren't passionate about.

If by this blog I talk you out of being a project manager--and you choose to be a potter or artist or entrepreneur--then I believe I have done you a great service (and you can feel free to send me a check--or just a simple "thank you" for that service). Seriously. Do what you love, and the money will follow. Do what you do JUST for money, and your life will be forever impoverished.

Cheers,
Jim Lewis
(c) 2009 by James P. Lewis