What is a Project Manager’s Motivation?

Last month, we sent both our winners from the October edition of Ten in Ten: A Celebration of Project Management tickets to PMI UK Chapter’s Synergy 2012, Indig02, London. One of them, Ron Rosenhead, who blogs at the web URL bearing his name and also here at the Camel, was kind enough to drop a line to us the other day.

Lord Coe, not to mention other London 2012 delivery specialists and athletes, is someone project managers would love to see as a keynote speaker – perhaps at Synergy 2013? Image courtesy Doha Stadium Plus @flickr.

Hi Dan, I hope this email find you and all at Arras well. I am writing to thank you for the ticket for Synergy 2012. It was a good day and thanks to Arras People, I was a VIP! Please pass on my thanks to others within the company. Please advise if I need to thanks PMI and if so, who.

Regards and keep up the good work.

Ana Santos was the other winner, and she also dropped us a line recently:

I appreciate the opportunity to participate in the survey and I’m happy to have received the prize this month.

Thanks very much.

Glad you both had a good time! We hope that everyone fortunate enough to win this year enjoyed themselves.

********

OCTOBER ANALYSIS

With regard to October, the survey produced some intriguing findings. We asked our participants What inspires them to go to work every day? Just one in ten told us they were inspired by the pay – nearly two out of every three respondents (66%) said they were inspired by factors within their working day – the company, the team members or the project itself. Some indicated the final option (Other), then offered these short gems about what motivates them:

“Getting the job done and see the results (benefits!)”
“It’s a combination of team, project and pay, and to a lesser extent the company”
“Professional pride – that I raise standards in the business”
“Making a change stick”
“The mortgage”
“The challenge”

Despite the promise of a trip to a PMI UK Chapter-sponsored event for the winner of the October survey, our question Are you a member of a professional project management organisation? Please tick all that apply raised some eyebrows around here – 40% of participants told us they held no professional organisation memberships whatsoever. On this same question, 25% told us they were APM members, compared to 24% who held PMI membership. We found just 5% that were members of both.

Another TICK ALL THAT APPLY question brought out the wealth of opportunities for project managers to stay current. We asked What tools do you use to keep up to date with project management / trends? The most popular choice was Online information – websites and blogs at 73%. Combine that with those that tapped Project management forums such as LinkedIn (this made up 39%) but not the former choice, and over 3 out of 4 project managers surveyed logged on in some way to find out what was going in the industry. Not surprisingly, training courses (50%) came in second.

PMI offered another write-in question: If you could choose any speaker for Synergy 2013, who would it be? There were some cheeky responses (seriously: PMI is going to invite the chief executive of rival APM???), but two names came up the most: Lord Coe and Eddie Obeng, at 3% each. Coe’s experience heading up the delivery of the 2012 Olympic Games to London also inspired other chimes from participants for Olympic affiliates, including Bradley Wiggins, Paul Deighton and Dave Brailsford. Other names that got multiple backing included Sir Richard Branson, Boris Johnson, Dr. Thomas Juli and the recently re-elected US President Barack Obama. This comment, however, proved the most intriguing:

“Someone from Apple, Google, Crossrail, the Olympics or a major government project. Maybe someone from a famous failed project? (i.e. the NHS IT upgrade?)”