Becoming Adaptive

Execution is a specific set of behaviors and techniques that companies need to master in order to have competitive advantage. It is a discipline of its own.
-Bossidy, Execution

Even though Project Management is its own discipline with its own tools, techniques and best practices, it must be implemented so that it enhances rather than doing harm to this crucial conversation between strategy and execution.

“Fit” between project management and the culture, context and goals of the organization allows the partnership between execution and strategy to achieve agility and create value. Anything that either complicates this exchange or fails to provide the appropriate level of information disrupts this crucial flow of information and leads to the destruction of value.

This is why prescriptive project management approaches that promote a “one size fits all” approach for all projects and all organizations are nonsense. Although similarities, standards and best-practices exist, you must know the individual organization’s culture, context and goals well enough to recognize them.

Project management standards need to be descriptive rather than prescriptive – they are the notes, not the song. Of course, to be proficient in their profession, project managers need to know these standards. But, that’s just the starting point. They also need the insight and experience to know what they should and (more importantly) shouldn’t apply in a specific context.

This difficult issue of achieving “fit” makes the implementation of project management more of an art than something you can buy off the shelf. In fact, according to a recently completed, multi-million dollar study sponsored by the Project Management Institute, depending wholly on external help to implement project management for your organization may be a mistake.

The need to customize project management to your organization and then “own” it is one of the major findings of this study. Later, this study will be described and explored, highlighting its finding that value is created when project management “fits” the organization.

Project Management needs to be adaptive rather than simply prescriptive if the crucial partnership between Strategy and Execution is going to work.