The purpose of this posting is to clarify why certified project managers are not sales representatives, pre-sales consultants, or business development persons. Certified project managers serve their organizations in a highly skilled manner. Therefore, certified project management professionals have a higher probability of creating sustainable successful results over the long term.
The ten reasons why:
- Project Managers invest in learning the complexity and nuances of managing difficult projects. (Rare in most organizations)
- Stand out as different because we invest in evaluating the lessons learned so that old issues do not reappear. (Develop insights and establish commitments that can be transferred on to newer project managers and team members)
- Project managers and the organizations we support, support the development of their industry including their competitors. (Webinars, Articles, Free Online Courses, White Papers)
- Project managers commit to an on-going cycle of learning and take conscious steps to learn new approaches, reflect and learn by doing.
- In the traditional sales or organizational development approach (refer to slide 1), learning takes place as it is passed on from apprentice, who becomes a journeyman, and finally becomes a master. Whereas, certified project managers learn by doing, but start with experience (5 years+ of work experience is required to become a certified project management professional from Project Management Institute – PMI.org)
- Certified project management professionals learn by doing, start with experience, commit to trying to learn from and build on the experience (refer to slide 2- experience to reflection to conceptualizations to generalizations to application, and then to more experiences)
- Certified project management professionals create and assess values, action strategies, and design new values and assumptions (based on PMI’s ethical code of conduct) during projects (refer to slide 3)
- Certified Project Managers leverage a broad set of practices from other disciplines and attempt to gain mastery by understanding where the practices come from so that they are perceived as relevant, immediately applicable and directly implementable.
- Certified Project Managers recognize the importance of strategy, leadership, finance, management, business acumen, and we have the skills to internalize, adapt and apply them in real time
- Certified Project Managers engage in critical thinking about why we experience the results we do in organizations (by analyzing how 10 knowledge areas of project management fit together, thereby supporting the advancement in maturity of practices)
Refer to posting on executive tips on how to hire a project manager and the mission of this site.
Created and curated by Emi Akiode, PMP
Emi Akiode is available for private consulting engagements via LinkedIn or Instagram at project_insider.
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