Strategies are polished but the implementation is difficult. Project managers are qualified and certified but surveys say that only 15 – 30% of projects succeed. Transparency of project portfolios is required but finally not welcome. Resources are scarce but a lot of energy is wasted in project administration, conflicts of interest and logjams in decision making.

There are three recommendations for a “breakthrough”

  1. Do not only study the procedures and best practices of project management but apply them in a meaningful and consistent way. They are made to support clarity, decision making and implementation. If you have clarified the project portfolio, decide on priorities and cancel projects that are not relevant at the time. If you are not willing, save the effort, time and frustration. Instead, act to make the “right” things happen.
  2. Create a deeper understanding for your project towards a project system involving the project environment. Do not separate the project from the rest of the organization, do not seek the comfort zone, but involve the stakeholders’ relevant interests and experiences, tensions and contradictions, frictions and conflicts. Involve the true owners of the issues and solutions. Involve the experts and decision makers you need. Let them take on their responsibility. No artificial overhead, no deputies.
  3. Appreciate your projects as role models for your future company. Learn to interact with the volatile world, manage the shortage of resources, understand what is crucial: Care for meaning rather than precise target descriptions, care for pace and rhythm rather than following a plan because it is a plan. Care for acceptance rather than for brilliant elaborations and for social constellation rather than for strict structure. If your team has “understood” this, it will deliver the right result at the right time, even if you don’t know in advance what it will be.

The future organization starts each day anew, with each project.