Some Thoughts About Governance, PMOs and the Thinking Project Manager

December 14, 2022 | by Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin

Post-PMI Summit, I found myself re-doing a number of the slides for my upcoming Great IT Pro webinar on PMO Governance (join us Dec. 22). The chance to hear the thoughts of other project management experts and professionals in sessions that covered topics from Artificial Intelligence to futurism to resource management ... and the chance to think and talk about it all for a few days before work commenced again ... had changed my ideas.

This made me circle back around to an idea that has become a certainty in the past few years: in all areas of our lives today, and especially in the management of complex projects, businesses, and personal dilemmas, we do not take the time to THINK. The constant stream of distractions that pour through our devices may, on the surface, seem to be necessary to the decisions and efforts we have to make. But in fact, video images have a way of short-circuiting our brains, leading us away from inner sources of knowledge, creativity and ethics. And the pile-up of data we receive daily, rather than contributing to informed decision making, can lead us astray if it is not thoughtfully analyzed in context. Don't take my word for this: there are masses of studies and article on the topic on the Web. Here's one from Harvard Business Review.

I knew that devices were going to rewire my brain a few days after I got my first Kindle years ago, when, reading a print copy of The New Yorker, I found myself tapping the corner of the page instead of turning it. My heart sank. But of course that didn't prevent me from acquiring an iPhone and all the bad habits that go with it. It's pointless to stand athwart history yelling STOP, as William F. Buckley once joked about himself, but we must master our sources of information, distraction, and confusion lest they master us. Let's begin by thinking about several of the areas of project management in which time to think might inprove our outcomes:

• The identification of risks and opportunities
• The definition of requirements and benefits
• The formulation of strategies and objectives
• The resolution of conflicts
• The engagement of stakeholders
• The development of KPIs and other performance measures
• The formulation of criteria for portfolio governance
• The implementation of organizational change.

In fact, all the most important and fundamental decisions we make in business are at risk of turning into snap decisions that we make with a tap on the corner of the page, sometimes based on data that has not been turned into knowledge by being put into context and thought about, discussed with others whose viewpoints may differ and shed light, and field-tested with stakeholders. I know that speed is taken to be a value in and of itself, but when it comes to deciding what to do and why, that may be completely wrong. AI is popular because it brings lightning speed to calculations and comparisons of enormous abouts of data. I'm not knocking that very real value. But, as a couple of PMI speakers noted (you can still view these sessions on demand btw) it can make all the wrong decisions for the wrong reasons unless the human beings that set up the frameworks have thought, long and hard, about the system they are creating.

Next week, I'll put this laptop away and unplug my phone for the duration of the Christmas holiday and however you celebrate midwinter, I hope you will too. Business is a "thought experiment" in Einstein's terminology. Gaze out at the snow and ponder some of the areas listed above. You might just have an epiphany ... by the time Epiphany rolls around.

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About the Author

Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin

Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin is editor-in-chief for PM Solutions Research, and the author, co-author and editor of over twenty books on project management, including the 2007 PMI Literature Award winner, The AMA Handbook of Project Management, Second Edition.

View Posts by Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin

Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin

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