Going for Gold

This blog post was published on November 22, 2012 at 08:32 am GMT

We live in an age of unprecedently elaborate projects, indeed most of us make our living by being part of one or more of them – locatable somewhere on a flow chart between key milestones, aiming to squeeze out the next deliverable on time, within budget and fit for purpose. So Professor Liz Daniel’s November 29th Breakfast Briefing on getting more benefits from your projects promises to be a particularly worthwhile way of starting the working day. Projects of all sorts demand so much time, effort and money that we owe it to ourselves to make sure we are getting the most out of them.

Many of the most challenging projects are played out in the full glare of public scrutiny. One slip and the media will be baying for blood on behalf of outraged taxpayers or shareholders. Today’s project manager has therefore got to add public relations and customer care to the traditional project management skill set. The recent success of London 2012, surely one of the most difficult and visible large-scale projects ever undertaken, was due not only to a great technical performance, but also an outstanding effort to win hearts and minds. Not everyone’s projects will be on such an Olympian scale, but Professor Daniel’s insights promise to increase the amount of gold to be won from all of them.