In my most recent blog, I used the “What do you want to be when you grow up?” catch phrase to express my belief that project managers must have a longer term plan and defined goals for their personal and professional growth. Going through and codifying this thought process is part of formulating your own personal vision.
Organizations too have a vision and it is important to know and understand what that is for two reasons. One is that if you are responsible for project management in that organization, you need to structure your work and outcomes based on that vision just as you would ensure your project work contributes and is congruent with the objectives and outcomes of a corporate strategic or business plan. Second it is useful to compare your vision with the organizations to see if there is commonality and that it is an organization that is likely to understand and value your contribution.
As a general rule vision statements are the organizational equivalent of “What the company wants to be now and when it grows up in the future?” As such they are often “aspirational”.
Here are a few examples:
Ken Blanchard Companies
To be the number one advocate in the world for human worth in organizations.
Caterpillar
Be the global leader in customer value.
Chevron
At the heart of The Chevron Way is our vision …to be the global energy company most admired for its people, partnership and performance.
All very good aspirations indeed especially if you were a customer of one of these enterprises.
I think you can see that it would be time well spent considering how your particular project management assignment and your personal role in it is congruent with and will contribute to the overarching corporate vision. This is just one-way to get at the M in the formula P+M=O motivation for you, your team and your corporation.
Carl Sergeant, PMP, brings an entrepreneurial, results-based focus to his consulting and presenting practice based on more than three decades of project, program and portfolio management experience.
Carl Sergeant can be contacted at 1 905 466 7778 or [email protected]
