We’re Not Ready for a Seat at the Table (Yet)

There’s a popular narrative going around that Project Professionals should seek to ‘be more strategic’.

That they should lobby for a ‘seat at the table’.

While an understandable sentiment (everyone wants to be ‘heard’, and to be seen as important), I think that *at this time*, this is not only misguided, but also dangerous to the profession.

Being strategic, or ‘sitting at the table’ suggests you have an understanding of not just *business* in general, but how *your particular* organization does business – not just *your particular* function in the business.

And herein lies the problem – there is nothing in *any* project management training that addresses this, or suggests that by being trained in project management one has also been trained in *business* – finance, operations, supply chain, sales, marketing, profit/loss, competition, staffing, etc., or how these interrelate.

But it’s actually worse than that.

The idea of the ‘Accidental Project Manager’ is so common that it’s likely the ‘rule’ rather than the ‘exception’.. 

These are by and large people who are acting as Project Managers but haven’t even been ‘trained’ in project management. 

So project management training doesn’t include ‘business’ training, but even if it did, the majority of Project Managers haven’t even been formally trained in project management, so they wouldn’t have been exposed to this aspect anyway. 

So we end up with people who haven’t been trained *on their own jobs*, being told to level up and try to operate at a macro level in *other* areas where they have no training, experience, or expertise. 

The idea that one knows how to manage a project doesn’t mean they also know how to manage a company. This would be like a marketing professional thinking that because they’re really good at creating ad campaigns they should also have a ‘seat at the table’ about product development.

They’re both missing a level (or a few levels). 

Being good at the ‘functional’ aspects of the job doesn’t automatically translate into being good at the ‘leadership’ aspects of the job. 

And this is the part that’s missing. 

Before we extoll project professionals to lobby for a seat at the table, or a place in decision-making, we have to recognize what that requires. And then provide training *in those aspects*. If we want project professionals to be valued at the leadership or C-Suite, then we need a whole education/training segment devoted to leveling up PMs in those specific areas – business, operations, leadership, negotiation, etc.

As a quick example, both project management and portfolio management fall under the ‘project management’ or PMO domain, and yet there is a huge difference in how to approach both of these (portfolio isn’t simply ‘more projects’). And this is what the leadership level, and ‘the table’ are looking at.

So even the jump from project to portfolio is father than many PMs are currently able to make, and they have to make *that* jump before they can even think about making the jump to ‘strategy’. 

(Note: I’m not suggesting PMs have to become Portfolio Mgrs, I’m saying they have to understand the difference, and why that understanding is important)

Reaching for this before we’re ready (as a community) is only going to backfire. The view of leadership right now towards project management is already dim, and the way we fix that isn’t by asking for a *broader, more important* role, it’s in getting better at our current responsibility. And then, once we’ve done that, expanding out and showing that we have a broader understating of ‘the business’.

But in order to get that to happen, we need a whole new segment of training that fills in the gaps.

We don’t gain anything by asserting that we should be more important, we make the next step up by being so good at our jobs, and understanding the business and how it determines value, that leadership *invites* us to the table saying *we can’t do this without you*.

It has to be a pull on their part, not a push on ours.

(Note: obviously I’m not saying *all* PMs fall into this category, but I do think it applies to the majority rather than the minority)

Originally published on LinkedIn