Now there is a global trend in the field of project management: enterprises are investing heavily in the development of their project managers, and at the same time providing them with a direct road to top management. So what abilities should an enterprise project manager have?
First, the basic knowledge of project management
Obviously, the basic knowledge of project management is something that everyone in the industry must master. Most enterprises use nine aspects of project management knowledge structure to define these? Nuts and bolts? By requiring these employees to obtain PMP qualification certificates, we can test whether they have mastered these nine aspects of knowledge.
In addition, enterprises need these people to express and apply this knowledge in various projects under different circumstances. Many project managers start from working in a project team, then develop into team leaders, implement and manage small projects, and gradually take over larger and more responsible projects.
Besides asking for these? Nuts and bolts? In addition, enterprises also need two aspects of experience: 1, experience in using tools. Now anyone engaged in project management should use some related software tools (without specifying which one).
2. Experience in using certain working methods. They should have used some working methods, whether it is a specific project management process or a system development model.
Second, customer relations and consulting skills.
The project manager should not be a technical expert who only stays in the office. Instead, they should stand in the front line of customers, understand their needs, and formulate and implement solutions to meet these needs. Accordingly, the ability to listen to and understand customers' needs and the ability to formulate more valuable solutions have become the key core competencies of project managers. However, many project managers have not mastered these skills.
According to a recent survey report of American Management Association, more than 300 interviewed managers agreed that their project managers need to cultivate two abilities most: consulting and customer relationship skills. A recent research report of Zhiyue Consulting Company also shows that enterprises need a series of advanced courses in project management. Every customer of Zhiyue requires us to develop not only various management courses, but also consulting skills courses for project managers, which are not necessarily related to project management topics. It can be seen that this information clearly expresses that consulting, listening and providing suggestions for customer business solutions will be the main tasks of project managers, and they need to do better!
Three. Operational and financial skills
Now the project manager should not only pay attention to the technical scheme, but also be able to put forward the scheme with the sales staff. In order to become an effective partner of sales staff, the project manager needs to know two important business factors: what business model the company adopts to bring its products and services to the market; The financial situation that supports the business model.
For example, suppose we are a big company that manufactures IT hardware. Over the years, we have been famous for our superb technology. Over time, due to various reasons, the marginal gross profit of hardware is greatly reduced. Therefore, we now find that it is more profitable to provide hardware services to customers than to just sell hardware. We can reduce the hardware price to the cost recovery price and create opportunities to sell our services to customers. This is our business model. Every enterprise has its own business model and market entry strategy. Interestingly, many IT project managers don't know the business model of the enterprise, and even less people know how finance supports the business method of the enterprise.
Fourth, leadership.
Leadership can be embodied in many aspects, and the key of project manager's leadership is to let a group of people do a specific job. In addition, all our customers and I are optimistic that these leadership skills can be taught, learned and used for the benefit of enterprises.
Leadership training can take many forms, from extreme, such as standing in a hot tub and reciting poems in front of your team, to ordinary, such as attending labor law training courses. Whether it is the type of training or the learning purpose of specific training courses, the ultimate goal of leadership art training is to help the project manager lead a working group to complete a task. In addition, the training of leadership art adopts a step-by-step method, and the leadership ability of the project manager is gradually cultivated by letting the project manager complete various tasks with different difficulties in a period of time.
Verb (short for verb)? Upsell? skill
In the process of communication or cooperation with existing customers, there are often some potential or additional needs. If we can find the opportunity to sell extra services or products to customers and make full use of this opportunity, it will play an important role in enterprises and projects. We call this ability? Upsell? Skills.
Interestingly, customers usually expect project managers of enterprises to have? Upsell? A client I trained once told me that although some projects were progressing smoothly, he was quite disappointed with the cooperative relationship with the project manager. You see, after working with them for so many months, they never gave us any suggestions for improvement.
Some project managers are not interested in selling more products and services to customers. They said they didn't want to be seen as? Sales? Personnel. But in fact, customers expect them to bring new suggestions to help them develop their business. In fact, isn't it the project manager who cooperates with customers on the spot day after day? Isn't the project manager the most knowledgeable about the customer's business? Isn't it possible for the project manager to give customers the best advice to help them improve their business performance?
Six, negotiation and communication skills
When most people hear it. Negotiation? You will immediately think of buying a car, buying a house or signing a contract agreement with a customer. There is no doubt that we need some negotiation skills to negotiate for buying a car, real estate and signing a contract, but we also need skills to guide a group of people with different ideas to a common goal; Dealing with difficult customers; Calm the mood of shareholders. You can call it negotiation skills. Politics? Skill or? Diplomacy? Skill. No matter what you call them, if you master these skills, you can get things done or make concessions without causing mutual hostility.
Of course, what are the communication skills and negotiation skills? Hands and gloves? That's inseparable. In today's project-based modern enterprises, project managers are increasingly required to show project progress to enterprise management.
For example, we are currently working with a large pharmaceutical group, which has a project manager for each major drug development project. These projects can span eight years and cost $400 million, so it is particularly important for the top management to know the specific progress of the projects in time. The management consists of the president of the Group Pharmaceutical Branch (with an annual turnover of up to 30 billion US dollars) and other key management personnel in the organization. In other words, there are some influential people in this management Committee.
Therefore, it is one of the most important abilities for a project manager to stand in front of them to demonstrate the progress of the project and advise them to continue to advance or terminate the project. Some people call this the touchstone, which decides whether to end a career or go up a storey still higher.
Seven, dare to take risks
Every manager I know wants their project manager to take more risks in his work. They are looking for people who can overcome work difficulties with perseverance and make bold innovations for the benefit of customers. However, they do not want the project manager to take unnecessary blind risks. Professional development in this field will focus on understanding the vitality contained in risks and using a set of tools and technologies to identify, deal with and control risks.
In addition to risks, project managers need to be very alert to find and make full use of opportunities. Many managers think that project managers have not invested enough time to identify potential opportunities for themselves and the enterprise.
Eight. Strategic vision
The project manager an enterprise is looking for should have the ability of foresight, be able to go beyond the limitations of its own project and fully understand the relationship between the project and the company's business objectives and customer objectives. With this vision, the project manager can see what others may not see, understand the correlation between one job and the next, and provide suggestions for areas that customers do not fully understand.
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