Owais Mughal
Absolutely!
In today’s work environment a Project Manager (PM) is an entrepreneur who is in the business of customer satisfaction as well as delivering profits for the company through successful execution of projects.
Neither of these targets could be achieved if like an entrepreneur a PM does not understand why a project is being pursued. Entrepreneurial PMs do not blindly start working on a project just because their boss told them to do so but they try to understand the strategic and financial value of the project. This understanding gives them a better buy-in and motivation to work on the project.
All projects are unique. One cannot simply follow a master script of project execution for all the projects and expect the results to be magically identical. Every project has its own inherent set of ambiguities and challenges. While a PM should follow a project management methodology e.g. waterfall, scrum, hybrid etc., problems will still occur in every project that are unique and with little or no precedence on how to solve them.
This is where modern day PMs again act like entrepreneurs and solve these unique problems by being ethical, resourceful, creative and risk takers. These PMs act as if the project is their own baby and so they own both problems as well as solutions just like an entrepreneur does. These PMs are self disciplined and self directed leaders.
When faced with issues of an unhappy customer, entrepreneurial PMs do not hide behind the organizational hierarchy. i.e. they do not leave it to their managers to deal with the problems but like an entrepreneur face the issues head on and solve them by being resourceful and by going to solutions which others may not have thought about. e.g. when faced with resource constraints, these PMs think of virtual resourcing, contracting out the work or other solutions that are missed by others.
When team members do not cooperate or when conflicts happen, our PMs once again deal with the issues like an entrepreneur. They use human skills and diplomacy to get the necessary buy-in and cooperation from others. This is done without having to use the stick of bosses. See if a manager has to spend his/her political capital and wield a stick to get the necessary cooperation for a PM then it also reduces the respect and trust among team members therefore this should only be used as a last resort.
These are all the characteristics of an entrepreneur and I rest my case by making the final statement that yes, today’s project management is all about thinking and acting like an entrepreneur.
Projects and Products 