If you do a quick research on project success rates, you will notice the high rate of failed projects.  Project Management Institute (PMI.org), the globally acclaimed organisation that sets the standards and disciplines of project management, reported in their Pulse of the Profession yearly publication (February 2018) that 31% of projects did not ‘achieve their original goal or business intent’.

You can’t but wonder why there is a high rate of failed projects despite the many frameworks, disciplines, methodologies, trainings and continually improving processes.  It is certainly time to look beyond ‘how’ we do things (methodologies and processes) and carefully consider ‘who’ are doing things (people).

This is the theme of my presentation that I delivered in Berlin in May 2018 during the PMI EMEA Congress 2018.  My argument is “a fool with a tool is still a fool”.  To improve your project success rate, or any other business success for that matter, you have to:

1. recruit the right people, and
2. more importantly: motivate, inspire, encourage and challenge them.

In other words, you have to continually engage your staff.

Today’s knowledge workers are highly skilled with access to sophisticated tools; a plethora of learning and training resources to stay ‘on top’ of new trends and technologies; and easier access to a wider range of markets – local and overseas via outsourcing and virtual teams.  The moment that the good knowledge workers feel demotivated, they will jump off your ship and swim to another ship – and they are very good swimmers.

To keep your good staff on-board, you should have ‘engaging leaders’.  Read on my presentation slides StopManagingStartEngaging to learn how to be an engaging leader.  You can also download the one-page Handout-StopManagingStartEngaging to use with your teams.