Roles

Good project managers are hard enough to find, and great project managers are rarer still. Thanks to Andy Crowe (Alpha Project Managers), though, we now have a peek inside the top 2% of project managers, based on a study of 5,000 of them as rated by their peers/clients. Not surprisingly, great project management requires a lot more than the ability to move a milestone.

Here are the top ten traits of project managers who are really making ideas happen:

Qualities of a Great Project Manager

• Command authority naturally. In other words, they don’t need borrowed power to enlist the help of others--they just know how to do it. They are optimistic leaders who are viewed in a favorable light and are valued by the organization.

Using a database of hundreds of firms in about 90 different metropolitan areas across North America, what are the three things that principals struggle with the most? You might recognize yourself.

 There’s not a lot to say on this subject, but management does seem to attract control freaks in inordinate numbers. My own experience as a control freak was a bit hilarious. I decided that it was time to research OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) tendencies, and so I went online and ordered three books. Right. Not one book, but three. As I explained this to someone, she just laughed, nearly rolling around on the floor. Ordering three books on obsessive compulsive tendencies seems to confirm the diagnosis before even cracking open one of the books, no?

The reason marketing firms fail is not creativity, location, or the marketplace. It’s management ability. Your firm is a direct reflection of you, and you must take responsibility for it. Here are the most common dozen mistakes we see marketing firms make. If you are managing a firm now, you’ll identify immediately. If you are an employee, this might give you some context for the decisions you may not agree with. If you are considering starting a company, this will help you learn from the mistakes of others.

While running your firm looks a lot like the reverse peeling of an onion, building layer after layer, at some point you need to quit building on the past and start constructing an entirely new firm. That process of cutting ties with the past is essential…and terrifying. It’s what happens when a child moves out, a bird gets kicked out of a nest, or a student pilot takes off on that first solo flight. It’s probably more likely that you’d associate moments of terror with starting your firm, but it actually requires far more courage to move beyond that initial founding.

“Free agents” aren’t found exclusively in sports any more. But free agents everywhere are highly paid and share a common motivation: to make their own choices and to make an impact. You are a free agent, as are those who work for you. And understanding this new game can give you a different perspective on your career as well as help you see how your employees think.

Dan Pink is contributing editor to Fast Company and former head speech writer for Al Gore. He was asked to keynote a conference we co-founded, and this interview followed that presentation.

Which one do you have? The lines are blurred, obviously, and sometimes the answer is not intuitive. If you have less freedom and more responsibility than ever, you might very well have a company. If you enjoy it, you certainly don’t have a job. And if you have visions of getting rich, you might very well have a hobby. Just kidding!

If you want to be taken seriously, you should have a company. And it doesn’t matter if you have no employees or dozens of them. But if you think of what you do as a business, you’ll do more planning, craft a compelling positioning for the marketplace, and think quite differently about the financial component of what you do.

A large percentage of the marketing community works at in-house departments within large corporations. The designers and illustrators and photographers and writers and strategists who choose to work in those settings do so for the opportunity, structure, benefits, predictable hours, career paths, and greater collaboration.

If you doubt that a large percentage of designers, for example, are not working for small firms, attend any conference in this field and just look at the attendee list. But in spite of their large numbers, they are underserved in some ways. All the craft topics are applicable, but there is very little advice on how to run a marketing department. How should it be structured? What systems will ensure good work that is also timely? How should that department be marketed?

The notion to write about this comes from the fact that there’s been more merger/acquisition (M/A) activity in this field recently than I’ve ever seen in any six-month period. What’s especially notable is that it’s occurring in a difficult economic climate.

For background, over the last 15+ years I’ve been the lead advisor on nearly 150 transactions, crafting 700+ valuations in the process. (If you’d like to use the valuation formula in your buy/sell agreement, you are welcome to do so for free.)

What are the characteristics of a leader that others want to follow?As you’ll soon see, this list is a very personal one. In other words, we’d all come up with different elements when building the list. What I’ve tried to do, though, is to think of a complete leader. So I’ve asked myself this question: can I imagine a leader who isn’t fair, for instance. The answer is obviously no. Each one of these, then, describes a leader’s characteristics, any one of which might hinder their effectiveness if missing in any significant proportion. What I’d encourage you to do--maybe even before you read this list--is to first make up your own list and compare it with mine. (These are not presented in any particular order.)