Can you do better than "The Apprentice" project manager?

Have you seen "The Apprentice" TV series? If so, do you think that the “Project Manager” is truly effective and doing the things that a real-life project manager would do? I’d say: “not often!” I sometimes cringe when I see how they approach things and I wonder if people think that’s what I do as a project manager.

Whilst you only see the edited snippets, you rarely see the PM doing what a real project manager does to ensure that a project is delivered robustly. You don’t see them develop a plan (sometimes not even even verbally!). They often fail to define people’s roles and responsibilities and then snipe at each other in the board room about why certain things didn’t get done.

The Apprentice project manager at best, is a hybrid role combining the responsibilities of a Business Lead and Project Manager. Does this work in the real world? Sometimes - providing that the individual is a subject matter expert in that field, has experience of delivering change and is embedded into the department / organisation, however, this is likely to require their usual role to be back-filled, whilst the project is running. Most often, people in operational roles do not have the capacity, skills or experience to fulfil the role of PM, which is why businesses bring Project Managers in specifically to manage projects.

An effective project manager provides structure and organisation. They are the person who spins the plates, however, almost anyone can spin plates but an effective project manager will work with key stakeholders to determine why we need to spin plates, confirm which plates need to be spun, for how long, how fast etc. They will also be focused on the risks to ensure that plates continue to spin as required.

In the real world of project management, an effective project manager will robustly define, plan and facilitate the project, working closely with the Business Lead and other stakeholders. The PM doesn’t need to be a subject matter expert in anything other than project and change management. An effective Business Lead provides subject matter expertise for the specific field of the project and acts as the leader, chairperson and decision maker within the project team.

To enable success the PM will ensure that robust controls are in place to ensure that risks, issues, dependencies, interfaces, actions, changes, lessons etc. are all captured and managed with the least amount of stakeholder pain. If you fail to have such controls or provide too much stakeholder pain, you may find that “YOU’RE FIRED!”.

Please feel free to contact me to discuss how I can help your business approach change.