Whilst I write about project management, and my work experience is mostly from project management, I actually think of myself as someone in the education/learning industry. That’s where my passion lies – learning/education – and I can’t see myself doing anything else.
So, in preparation for this article I started looking at quotes on learning and education and there are lots of inspirational words out there (try Googling “education and learning quotes”) from some truly inspirational figures: Nelson Mandela, Malcolm X, Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Aristotle, and Leo Buscaglia. Excuse me? Who is Leo Buscaglia?
According to my research (i.e. Wikipedia) Felice Leonardo “Leo” Buscaglia (31 March 1924 – 12 June 1998) was an American author, motivational speaker and professor in the Department of Special Education at the University of Southern California.
He was also known as “Dr Love” (I think after his first book in 1972 entitled “Love”, and Love being a common theme in subsequent publications), and it was whilst looking for quotes on learning and education that I came across the following quote from him: Change is the end result of all learning
You know what, I just kinda liked it! And it got me thinking about project management learning, and how this is actually two-fold:
Taking the first of these, through my work with lots of different organisations there seems to be a real challenge with sharing good project management practice within departments – let alone enterprise-wide.
Communities of practice are great ways of building knowledge, sharing experiences, and learning from each other – yet after an initial flurry of activity when one is set-up, they often lose momentum and end up ‘abandoned’.
Which is a real shame – as they are a great vehicle for learning and continuous improvement and helping deliver change to an organisation’s processes and maturity.
I have seen some great examples of communities of practice that have many active members and which are almost self-sustaining (in that the members start and keep the discussions alive rather than a facilitator), and this is the key: active participation.
How many of you reading this know if your organisation has a project management community of practice? If they do, are you an active member? If not, why not? Are you a member of other social media platforms like LinkedIn? And are you active here?
I confess, if someone contributes to LinkedIn project management discussions yet does not contribute to their own organisation’s community of practice, I struggle to understand why: posting interesting articles, tips, research publications, etc etc on LinkedIn will almost certainly be useful and interesting to your own community of practice.
An opportunity to learn and change is lost!
Onto the second point about project management training/education. Why do we go on project management training/education (or any other training/education for that matter)? To learn. To better ourselves. To effect change in ourselves and our organisation.
Change is the end result of all learning. If change is not the end result of all learning, then why bother learning?
Projects deliver change. When undertaking project management training/education you are wanting to learn how to deliver change better and more efficiently – and you may need to change your processes to ensure this happens (what about someone who is just there to get an exam pass? You are still equipping yourself with the learning to do change better).
So, paradoxically, you are learning how to do projects better, which may require updates to your project management operating model, which will require a project to do this, which you are learning about how to change in the first place! See the paradox?
That’s not to say we shouldn’t start and try to change. Which leads me to my closing quote…
If you don’t dip your oar in the water, you’ll never row upstream
Who said this?
It was me!
