I believe that almost all project leaders come from technicians. Through excellent working performance, they are elected to higher positions, promoted, and charged in important positions in enterprises like team leader, project management, project manager, or higher levels.
So, with this situation, what we can be sure of is that the company will lose a good technician. Because when being charged as a project manager, this employee needs to spend full time on management work.
Will we have another better manager?
In common, the company still expects that when deciding to promote an employee to a new position for their past performance. However, in reality, it is not the case (Halo Effect) – the company may likely have a weak manager!
There are 2 main reasons for that:
The first reason: As a technician, they often have a passion for engineering, they often work with technical problems, machines, production processes, or production lines... while management is a completely different field. They need to work a lot with people, communicate skills, be insistent, manipulate others… Those things are very new to them, even though they hate them. Therefore, they generally tend to become more distant from their responsibilities, neglect project management work, people management, and focus a lot of time on engineering, which they are passionate about!
What will be the consequences when the company has one more bad manager? It may lead to damaged performances like projects being behind schedule, over budget, customers & employees complaining, even being disappointed, having poor quality products, spending all day meeting to solve problems…!
People often say "Self-motivation, household-management, State-governance”. If you are equipped with project management skills. It is certain that you will manage your family much better, you will teach your children better. Your spouse, family members, grandparents, relatives will also be happier with you. Because in fact, being “household-management” or managing a family is like managing a project – It is called the lifetime project!
Be carefully considered, we can see that if we have good management skills, we will get a lot of benefits:
1. Work more confidently, more efficiently, more gently (work smart, not work hard)
2. Career opportunities, wide promotion opportunities
3. Higher incomes, even it be remarkable changed
4. Using the method of "household management" to teach your child & your spouse, your family & relatives smarter. Hence, they will be easier with you and from there you are more likely to have a big happier family.
How to equip management skills, especially project management skills?
The most commonly used way is training knowledge and sharing experience from one generation to the next, giving the project leaders plenty of trials and opportunities… This method is good, but we have to pay dearly for that. What will the PM learn if he failed in his previous projects?
Another much more effective way that not many people know, is to quickly catch up with the modern management methods in the world, through studying and taking project management international certification exams. Regarding project management, we have a set of "divine" certificates from the American project management institute (PMI - pmi.org) including PMP, PMI-ACP, or management certification systems from other organizations such as Scrum.org or scrumalliance.org… Maybe it will take you a little time (several months) or a little money (5-20 million VND) but if you compare it to the benefits you get, it doesn't matter and it is never worth the fuss!
Realizing this important thing, I have begun to embark on a new path, as people say "Teacher"! I even decided to give up an exceedingly good job with a high-paying & stable to pursue my passion.
My first activity towards the above goals is building a training system to obtain international certificates of PMP, PMI-ACP from the American Institute of Project Management (PMI). And of course, there will be many next activities to actualize the goals.
With the spirit of “Together we can change the world.". I expect my friends, relatives, and project management community members will continue to encourage and support me that will burn my passion up to achieve the goal of “Helping numerous people in the project management industry, help enterprise improve their knowledge, skills, and project management capabilities to get more successful in project management today and in the future.”
Sincerely thank you!
Mr. Hoang Sy Quy, PMP, CMMI, PMI-ACP, CSM, A-CSM, ICP-ACC, ICP-ATF, ICP-CAT, ICP-ENT, Scrum@Scale