The unwritten rule is that you don't get ahead by just doing your job well. What employers always want to see is 'something special'. That boils down to the willingness and ability to take on - and complete - projects that pose a clearly defined challenge and call for a range of management and organisational skills.
You don't have to build a Three Gorges Dam or run an Olympics. The basic requirement is to achieve change or an outcome within a specific time and budget. In the corporate context, this might include anything from arranging next month's office move to setting up a new factory on the mainland. It could be organising the annual dinner, upgrading the IT system, or co-ordinating the company's initial public offering.
Improve Your Project Management, by Phil Baguley, provides a reference for anyone keen to learn or lead. The author says that no two projects are ever the same. He explains the five fundamentals common to all and then sets out the essential steps for successful planning, monitoring, budgeting and execution.
The focus is to teach best practices and transferable skills, not to blind with project management science. There is a theory in terms of how best to organise teams, track progress and analyse risks. But this does not overwhelm, and something like the critical path on a Gantt chart becomes accessible when the 'project' it relates to is making a cup of tea. What soon emerges is that whether planning a Nasa mission to Saturn or a weekend getaway for two, getting it right depends on similar factors. At one level, there exists the usual trade-off between time, cost and performance. At another, there is the importance of soft skills for communicating, negotiating, motivating others and moving everyone towards the desired outcome as effectively as possible.
'Projects are, above all, about people,' Baguley says. 'So managing a project means you are going to learn how to lead.'
One chapter focuses on selecting specialists and team building. Others tackle managing finances and dealing with unexpected problems - done perhaps with the 80/20 Pareto principle to gauge potential impact, or an Ishikawa (cause and effect) diagram to identify root causes.