On the morning of December 10, programmer Ou jumped from the top of the ZTE building, leaving behind four elderly parents and a pair of young children, ending his 42-year life. This jump has caused a huge stir. This week, everyone has been discussing where we should go in mid-life.
Today, I happened to hear the song “Farewell” by Pu Shu on social media, and as a project manager, I feel I should write something to commemorate the deceased, while also providing some insights for the living.
From the perspective of project management, we always emphasize that everything is a project, and everyone is a project manager.
But not everyone is a good project manager. Recently, I have been reflecting on what qualities a good project manager should possess.
Based on years of practical work experience and analyzing the journeys of successful project managers, I have identified the following five points as the core competencies of project managers for everyone’s reference and discussion.
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Result-Oriented
Management master Peter Drucker emphasized the importance of focusing on results;
Stephen Covey in his book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” also clearly states that highly effective people start with the end in mind.
Being result-oriented is one of the core ideas of management, which emphasizes that every action and every step in management work must meet the requirements of the results; otherwise, it has no value or meaning.
From Ou’s incident, he did not think about the problem from the perspective of results. He left, what about the seven family members he left behind?
From the perspective of life projects, the project manager fled at a critical moment and did not shoulder the responsibilities he should have.
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Focus on Interpersonal Relationships
James Lewis emphasizes in “Project Planning, Scheduling, and Control” that Project is about people, and that success depends on people.
So as a project manager, an important soft skill is to focus on interpersonal relationships, which is what we call “kissing up”.
In Ou’s case, there were departmental adjustments, conflicts with leadership, and why was he always the scapegoat? This is something we need to reflect on.
In the company, we often see many employees with outstanding business capabilities, who are technically the backbone of the enterprise, but due to low emotional intelligence, they are often overshadowed by others at critical moments, ultimately becoming the “2B” youth.
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Prioritize Important Tasks
As project managers, our main contradiction now is between the increasing activities and insufficient resources.
From the national level to the company level down to individuals, it is actually the same. The prioritization in company management reflects the need to focus on important tasks. Our time and resources are not completely sufficient. At this point, we need to consider how to do more with less.
“Important tasks” can be divided into “urgent and important”, “important but not urgent”, “urgent but not important” and “neither urgent nor important”, and without a doubt, most of our energy should be focused on the first two, while preventing the latter from occurring.
However, in our daily work, we often play the role of firefighters dealing with those “urgent but not important” events.
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Avoid Excessive Pursuit of Perfection
The moon has its phases, and people have their joys and sorrows. There are many things in life that do not go as we wish; we cannot achieve perfection in everything.
We must allow the existence of imperfection and treat it as a risk.
Just like Ou, the company’s stock repurchase price did not reach the ideal price. But is there an ideal price? In fact, there isn’t; we always hope for a higher one.
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Be Positive and Optimistic
Life is about being content and happy. We often joke that “the customer tortures me a thousand times, yet I treat the customer like my first love”.
As a project manager, you must have a strong inner self and a positive attitude to face life.
The deceased is gone, may you be stronger in heaven;
For the living, may each of us work and live more calmly.