Holy Moses! The Original Hero Project Manager

In his recent article for
     titled  Holy Moses! How to Lead to the Promised Land,

Geoff Loftus wrote about Moses and his great project to lead the Israelites to the Promised Land. I had already been thinking about Moses as a part of another project, so it really caught my attention.

First, let's address the title of this blog. Was Moses the first Hero Project Manager? Why wouldn't God get that title?

Well, even with all the wonderful things that God brought forth, such as creating the Heaven and the Earth and all things in between, I wouldn't consider him a project manager. Being omniscient, he had no need for a detailed plan, he KNEW how to complete his undertaking. Being the source of all things, he had no budget and no concerns of resource shortages. Being eternal, he had no time constraint.

How about other project managers before Moses? Noah built The Ark to save two of every creature on earth from the coming flood. Joseph prepared a land of safe haven in Egypt for the Canaanites to escape the famine. Surely they could be candidates for the Hero Project Manager title.

But both Noah and Joseph managed projects with one great difference from Moses' project. They both had hope of enjoying the fruits of their labor. Moses, on the other hand, sacrificed any hope of personally making it to The Promised Land in a heated negotiation with his sponsor, God, over whether the people should all be smitten for their terrible transgressions, such as worshiping at the altar of the Golden Calf.

Even with no hope of reaching the project goal personally, Moses was still faithful to his commitment. He interceded with his sponsor on behalf of the clients and, alternatively, lead his team and stakeholders to understand unpopular conditions of that sponsor. He maintained his integrity throughout a long and arduous project, even when the goal seemed unreachable. While he was firm and resolute in his adherence to the plan, he also was flexible enough to allow his plans to change when new situations arose.

Moses completed his project successfully even though he faced some of the most extreme obstacles. His sponsor didn't just think he knew it all, he DID know it all. His path was blocked by some unimaginably difficult obstacles. His stakeholders often lost all interest in the project. Who would have blamed him for resigning.

He persevered, though, and his people reaped the untold rewards of his dedication.

Moses was truly a Hero Project Manager.

Project Manager for Heroes

Mike Pungercar, of Springfield, Oregon, is a Hero Project Manager. There's no doubt about it in my book.

I read about Mike's project in an article, Flights give vets the hero treatment, in the online edition of the Register-Guard of Eugene, Oregon. Mike is project manager for South Willamette Valley Honor Flight, a part of the nationwide Honor Flight project. This project's mission is to take veterans of World War II on a visit to the World War II Memorial in Washington, DC.

As we are reminded in the article, we are losing this generation of heroes at a rate of about 850 per day. The day will soon come when we will no longer be able to honor them in person. We'll only have the memories of their sacrifice. And, a little farther down the road, it will only be something to read about in history books.

Today, though, we are honored to still be able to know them, to speak with them and to express our gratitude for their service. Maybe their actions in the war were heroic, or maybe they were only relatively routine. But, as far as I'm concerned, they all played an important part in an effort that helped preserve our way of life, our world.

My father fought in the South Pacific as a tail gunner for the Army Air Corps and later as a member of the Military Police corps. He was involved in action all along the chain of islands that lead from Wake Island around the southern rim of the Pacific through New Guinea and Guadalcanal, finally ending up in Tokyo. He didn't talk much about it. When he did,  at the time, I didn't realize just what he had gone through. Now, in retrospect, I am sad that I didn't understand, while he was here, what he experienced. I know I still don't fully grasp it. I've not been in combat situations, so I can't grasp it.

At least, thanks to books and movies and other sources, I do better understand what he and so many other men and women did for us. Daddy died over thirty years ago, before I understood, as I do today. I never paid him, in person, the honor he deserved.

So, Mike Pungercar is a Hero Project Manager. A hero for heroes.

And, today, I promise I will, in some way, contribute to Mike's project. Will you?

6 Project Leadership Super Powers - PM Hut

On the blog Project Management Hut Ty Kiisel posted an article, 6 Project Leadership Super Powers, that ties in nicely with the theme of this blog. While I contend that we all need to be heroes and avoid trying to be superheroes, Ty makes a good case for trying to make sure we do our best to fit these six "super powers" into out project manager tool kit.

Here's the opening paragraph.It is an interesting and fun-to-read article.

6 Project Leadership Super Powers

April 17, 2012 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: Leadership

6 Project Leadership Super Powers

By Ty Kiisel

My friends and I will sometimes debate whether Superman or Batman is the more interesting superhero. Technically, I guess Batman isn’t a superhero at all, he’s just a very disturbed guy who has the ability to create some incredible crime-fighting gadgets that make him appear to be a superhero (he’s my choice for most interesting superhero, by the way).

Superman, on the other hand, has a number of very incredible superpowers that make him more than a match for the average villain. The “Man of Steel” is too squeaky-clean and unbeatable to be really interesting in my opinion. Give me a flawed, kind of messed-up superhero for real “interesting” potential.

A couple of years ago I came across...

Was Benjamin Franklin a Hero Project Manager

Most Americans would agree that Benjamin Franklin was a hero. Among so many other things, he was instrumental in the founding of our country, the United States of America. He is certainly one of my heroes.

Without studying his project management abilities very deeply, I can guess that his character traits would have made him an excellent PM. But he was certainly not a superhero. In reading about him, he didn't seem to try to be. Even in his own writings, he admits that he was constantly struggling to learn to apply the qualities of a strong character to his life. He wanted to consciously practice desirable character traits until they became so deeply a part of his character that he unconsciously practiced them. They ultimately became, not traits he tried to exhibit but, traits he possessed in his core being.

Benjamin Franklin worked to ingrain within his character traits such as integrity, responsibility, commitment, humility, patience and courage. He monitored his actions and interactions with others to determine if he was successfully applying those traits. He sought ways to correct any tendencies to stray from those principles of good character. He was committed to becoming a man of good character.

In an article that I found through LinkedIn's Toastmasters Int group, Wyn N. Davies asks Are You a Pilgrim or a Tourist? Wyn speaks of life in general, but his message applies to us as project managers directly. Are you just a tourist in the role of project manager? 


Or are you a pilgrim, committed to BEING a project manager. If so, you will follow Benjamin Franklin's example and constantly try to build into your core character those traits that make us heroes. Traits such as cooperation, sound reasoning, perseverance and integrity. 


With that commitment you will be someone's project management hero.

Want to be a Guest Contributor?

Add Your Thoughts About Being a Project Management Hero

Maybe you agree with what has been posted here. Or maybe you don't. Either way your opinion will add to the conversation. We are bound to learn more about who we are and what we are trying to do if we have an open dialog with others.

One way to add to the conversation is to comment on the articles that are already here. I welcome all appropriate comments, although I do reserve the right to hide those I think are inappropriate.

Another way to add to the dialog is to be a Guest Contributor. If you find that you feel the need to write a comment that gets to be longer than a few paragraphs, maybe it should be a post all on its own.

Or, if you read a relevant article somewhere else, maybe we should re-post it here. You'll get credit for finding the article and the author will get credit and more readers through the links on this page.

Your post can be your original content or it can be a re-post from another source. Just make sure proper credit is given with links to the original article.

If you have an idea for a post you would like to submit, leave a comment to this post. I'll contact you and we will make arrangements to post your article.

Hero... or Superhero

As I stated in my first post, of the article  The Project Manager, a hero in Project Management: 
Posted by Marian Woods on March 22, 2012 at 12:57pm 
  , Marian's article was the inspiration for this blog. I will be writing about and collecting stories about project managers and their projects. And, yes, some of them will be heroes.

After adding Marian's article to my blog, I re-posted it in some project management discussion groups on LinkedIn. The result was some quite lively discussions about the concept of the project manager as a hero. In a way, I think the discussions got off track a little from the intent of the original article. At least, in my opinion.

The main message that I took away from Marian's article was the importance of six basic skills in effective project management. Those are:

1. Communication
2. Team building
3. Problem solving
4. Leadership
5. Commitment
6. Organization

In one of the LinkedIn discussions, we segued into a discussion of the merits of being a hero project manager. A lot of great points were made on the side of not being a hero. But, I think an important distinction was lost to some of those making that argument. That distinction is the difference between being a hero and trying to be a superhero.

Let's explore that difference a little. What makes someone a hero? A superhero?

Heroes are people who, in their everyday life model for others the following qualities:

1. Integrity
2. Patience
3. Sound Reasoning
4. Humility
5. Perseverance
6. Cooperation

Now, if you look at that list, it really is just another way of saying Marian's list. Or, at least, both list share the same basic concepts. Live your life, manage your projects, following these principles and you will be a hero to more people than you will ever know. People will see you as successful, effective and productive as well as sharing, likable and approachable.

So, what makes a superhero? While the superheroes of comics may have many or even all of the qualities we have listed above, those fantasy superheroes have been severely idealized. In real life if we try to be a superhero, we almost always (always?) end up pushing aside more and more of these important qualities.

Superheroes find themselves in situations that require them and only them to save the world. They end up jumping from one hot spot to another, putting out fires one after the other. Superheroes are required when no one else can save the day.

As the superhero gets more and more involved with saving the world, they may succumb to temptations to cut corners, thus impugning their integrity. They lose patience with others and take on even more of the load. In the rush to the next fire, the may not take time to use sound reasoning about the course of action. There's no room for humility. Yes, they will persevere, but so often for the wrong reasons. And cooperation goes right out the door as the superhero, with no help from anyone else, saves the world from forces no one else has the power to overcome.

The superheroes of comics had admirable qualities. And they saved their worlds from forces no one else could handle. But, those were fantasy worlds. In the real world none of us should want to be superheroes.

I do, however, sincerely hope that I can be somebody's hero, whether as a project manager or not.