Our interest is what makes a difference for our customers.  Having a (hopefully) healthy scepticism of methodology, we concentrate on people, conversations and relationships.  Our people development is always experiential and the way we work is innovative, hopefully impactful, certainly different.

We think project management has a problem. Being brief, process is necessary, but it is people and relationships that get project outcomes delivered.  And yet the project management profession still skims over this most critical factor.

I love projects, and I believe in great project management.  However, I see a reinforcing cycle of behaviour, which treats methodology too much as the answer.  

Organisations want the security of accredited systems. Comprehensive 'bodies of knowledge' give a sense of comfort. Project managers want recognised qualifications and a career credential.  The institutions promote their frameworks, and consultants and trainers lap it up, selling overly complex tools and rigid methodologies, which don't make the needed difference. Procurement departments and their tender processes join the race to the bottom.  Where there is big money, the big consultancies sell big solutions, making their clients feel anxious if they don't buy.  In turn, the types of people who love all the methods and systems are drawn into the profession, advocating even more of the same.  And so it goes on.  The message imbued is that project management is ever so difficult, and so needs super-clever solutions, when actually it’s easy, until you add people. In the end the most important people of all lose out; those leaders and teams who need great projects delivered.

This cycle of institutionalisation I do NOT believe in.  While ‘professionalism’ has successfully got project management on the map, has it also damaged the heart of what projects are about? At risk of becoming unpopular, I feel these things should be said. It is at the root of why I started People Deliver Projects in 2006 and we try to redress the imbalance every day.

If not this then what?  Our vision may sound simplistic; that projects are fundamentally about people coming together in pursuit of a difficult and uncertain collective outcome.  Our most important job helping them to succeed is to help create the human conditions for success:  Conversations, relationships, collaboration and trust, both within the team and across the stakeholders.  Within these conditions, little structure and process is needed – just enough to get the job done.  Then people, we ordinary folk, full of natural motivation, sociability, creativity and energy, can be trusted to deliver, together.

Andy Taylor, Managing Director