Tom Peters emphasized, "In modern management, the project is everything, and everyone is a project manager."
For managers, this sentence is worth serious pondering and thinking.
An efficient manager can not only be satisfied with managing employees well and doing things correctly, but also motivate employees to do more and do things correctly, so that employees can be full of enthusiasm and creativity, and make employees feel fulfilled in their work. Transcendence and self-realization.
Project management as a new management discipline is being more and more respected.
Project management is different from task management. Compared with it, it can exercise the skills of employees, stimulate their enterprising spirit and potential, and is more conducive to the realization of management decisions and the growth of employees. At present, the ability to independently undertake a project and do it well has become one of the signs to measure a person's ability level. Whether or not to lead employees to do more projects and gain benefits through projects has also become an important indicator to measure a manager's management level. .
Leading employees to become project managers is to require managers to manage employees at a higher level. In management activities, they should play the role of leaders more, lead employees to learn to manage themselves with projects, and let employees learn to be responsible for their work. grow below.
Managers must learn to manage employees with projects and lead employees to become project managers.
The benefits of using projects to manage employees
1. Effectively motivate employees.
Assigning an employee a project is more effective than simply telling the employee to get the job done.
In front of the project, employees are more willing to work proactively and actively seek leadership support and resource allocation. A project has strict acceptance criteria and completion dates, which invisibly puts pressure on employees, not from the manager's loud intimidation but from the project itself. When the employee gets all the information about the project, he will take the initiative to put a pressure on himself, he will remind himself to do the job well, this kind of active sense of responsibility is much better than the manager's daily tingling in the employee's ear.
Employees are more willing to take the project as their own business and be the owner of the project, because in this way they can experience the feeling of controlling a job, and can gain more self-satisfaction and transcendence in the process of project realization. Employees want to be appreciated and recognized by their managers through hard work, and of course they also hope to get more rewards and opportunities for promotion.
Experience shows that managing employees with projects can stimulate employees' potential and enable employees to achieve high performance under pressure.
2. Facilitate the establishment of a partnership between managers and employees.
Under project management, the manager is more like a counselor and coach. The main responsibility of the manager is to act as a partner to help employees plan work, anticipate changes, develop projects together with employees, and guide employees to strengthen learning and exercise in the process. , to help employees coordinate personnel and resources, remove obstacles in the work, implement management in a high-level cooperative way of employees, and start work.
Under this working relationship, the manager is more about leading the employees, rather than simply managing, which is a higher-level work style, and continuous strengthening of this work style will help managers work more efficiently and help managers own career planning and development.
3. Relationships that are conducive to creating teamwork
Projects are not a one-man business and usually require a close working team to complete. Using projects to manage employees means that employees may be team captains of their own projects or team members of other people's projects. Through this differentiated and infiltrated management method, management is flattened, team cooperation is established, and unconventional employees are promoted. growing up.
4. Conducive to on-the-job training for employees
From the establishment of the project to the completion of the project, the manager maintains continuous communication and contact with the employees. The manager can provide counseling according to the work situation of the employees, and the employees often discuss with the manager about the difficulties in the work. Employees can naturally improve.
In fact, this is a kind of on-the-job training, focusing on the growth of employees by focusing on the growth of the project, and this kind of training is more effective than some training.
The beneficiaries of project management
Mr. Ma is a beneficiary of project management.
Currently, he is the manager of the information department of a medium-sized high-tech enterprise, and holds several authoritative IT certifications from Cisco and Microsoft.
When he jumped to this company three years ago, he was just an enthusiast of enterprise informatization, just getting started. His automotive major has nothing to do with informatization at all, and his four-year design experience has nothing to do with informatization.
However, Mr. Ma has a high enthusiasm and a special hobby for enterprise informatization. In his spare time, he read some books on enterprise informatization, and spent time studying the informatization construction of his previous enterprise in his spare time.
With these basic skills and superb communication skills, Mr. Ma persuaded the recruitment examiner. Although the examiner still believed that Mr. Ma was suitable for communicating with customers and doing market development work, he still agreed with Mr. Ma to come to the company to try the work of informatization construction.
Mr. Ma is fortunate to be a beneficiary of project management.
When he first arrived at the company, the manager in charge of enterprise informatization construction only gave Mr. Ma a simple job description, so that Mr. Ma could familiarize himself with the company and the department's business as soon as possible according to the job description.
After less than three months, the manager called Mr. Ma to the office and expressed his expectations for Mr. Ma. He hoped that Mr. Ma could make some contributions to the company's informatization construction through his own efforts.
He gave Mr. Ma a plan for the company's informatization construction, which listed three projects: LAN construction, Internet construction, and ERP system construction. He told Mr. Ma that this is his work goal for the next three years, and that these three projects will be completed by Mr. Ma.
Mr. Ma, who is heavily entrusted, feels that he has a great responsibility. At the same time, he is also delighted that he has finally had the opportunity to practice in the IT field.
He is well aware that his knowledge, skills and experience are insufficient. Compared with the three projects in front of him, he still has a long time to learn and recharge in the future. So while accepting the project, he also listed himself a future study plan.
In the following two years, Mr. Ma devoted himself to work in a frenzied manner. He studied work, work and study with full horsepower, and gradually entered the working state. Of course, he also made sacrifices for this. When everyone else had been off work for two hours, he was still working intensely in front of the computer, and when others were on holiday, he still stayed in the computer room to search for data.
For these three projects, he really put it all together. With the support of the manager, the thinking of the work became clearer and clearer, and the progress of the project was gradually carried out as planned. He is getting more and more motivated and doing better and better. He has experienced the feeling of transcendence in the process of solving problems, and he is fully realizing himself.
Of course, in the past three years, he has not only done these three jobs. He also constantly gave some constructive suggestions for the company's cultural construction, provided training on computer operation for employees, equipped the company with microcomputers, and purchased office supplies.
His work ideas became more and more open, and he was more and more appreciated and recognized by the company's leaders. By the end of last year, the manager in charge of him resigned due to personal reasons (promoted to the general manager of another company), and he was naturally promoted to corporate information. manager of the department.
Recently, the top management of the company is intending to entrust him with the task of the company's knowledge management, and he is also considering the possibility of combining informatization and knowledge management. If successful, he will become the company's director of information technology and knowledge management.
Now, not only has he made some achievements in his work, but he also has a gradually clear blueprint and plan for his future career. In the near future, he will start his career.
Mr. Ma's experience is a good example of the role of project management in employee management. Using projects to manage employees can not only realize the manager's vision and planning for the future, but also stimulate employees' potential, so that employees can continue to be motivated and grow, improve employees' self-management level, improve performance capabilities, and make employees become masters of work and senior managers. Project manager.
3. Lead employees to become project managers
Leading employees to become project managers mainly need to consider the following points:
1. Analyze employee job descriptions
Job descriptions are the beginning of all management. Using projects to manage employees does not mean that you can ignore job descriptions. On the contrary, managers should spend more time studying employee job descriptions and find things to be improved and improved as the basis for setting up projects for employees. refer to.
2. Share the company's vision and strategic goals with employees
Any action of the work team is to serve the company's overall strategic goals, and every step of the work team must be related to the company's decision-making. Therefore, at the beginning of setting up a project for employees, the manager must fully share the company's strategy and goals with employees. Align the team's tasks with the company's goals and make every step of the team effective.
3. Share work team plans with employees
While sharing the company's vision, the manager should also share his plan for the work team with the employees, so that the employees can be more clear about the future work orientation and cooperate with the manager to make work arrangements.
4. Plan the career development of employees
Any vision and goals must be implemented by the employees themselves. If employees clarify their career plans, they will be more motivated and proactive. They are willing to cooperate with managers in order to achieve their career development and seek common development with the company. So managers must give employees a clear orientation, allowing employees to see the nearest target.
5. Set up projects with employees
Based on the previous work, the manager should proceed to communicate and agree with the employee on the creation of the project.
Managing employees with projects should emphasize the initiative of employees, and the project should be a performance contract reached on the basis of full communication, rather than the manager doing something to the employee alone. Adequate communication should be a principle for establishing projects. A project without sufficient communication will inevitably affect the effect of employees completing the project. Therefore, all information must be communicated and approved by the employees before finalization. It is best for both managers and employees. Sign it to show attention.
6. Coaching employees during the implementation of the project
The project is finalized, the work of the manager has just begun, and there is more to come. Managers must coach employees during the project implementation process, help employees coordinate resources and personnel, and remove obstacles at work, so that employees can work more efficiently, get more on-the-job training, and improve performance levels.
7. Provide feedback on positive employee performance
Timely positive feedback is conducive to strengthening the positive behavior of employees and expanding the impact of positive behavior.
Managers should always pay attention to the progress of employee projects, and praise employees for their positive behaviors in the process of implementing projects in a timely and sincere manner. At times, the employees themselves may forget what they have done.
8. Evaluate the effect of project implementation
After the project is completed, the manager should conduct a comprehensive and effective evaluation of the implementation effect of the project and give the evaluation results.
9. Communicate evaluation results to employees
After the evaluation is completed, the manager should once again formally communicate with the employee to formally inform the employee of the evaluation result. Summarize the successes and failures of the project implementation process with employees, give constructive suggestions for improvement, help employees build confidence, and guide them to correctly evaluate themselves.
The environment is changing all the time, and management is always innovating. There is no one-size-fits-all model, and there is no one-size-fits-all method. Managers may try to manage employees with projects and lead them to become project managers.