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PAPER 5

Paper 5

Megan Henderson

OGL 321: Project Leadership: Strategy and Scope

Professor Cristen Mann

July 30, 2022

one of the modules stating that leadership is not just a position, it’s a lifestyle. To be honest, this

really spoke to be because I find leadership and management to be really exhausting especially if

I let it bleed into the other pieces of my life. Always having to play a game, put on a face, and be

responsible and appropriate is not personally how I want to live my life. I feel constantly under

the radar, like I’m being watched, and I am in a leadership position. I don’t know that I’m cut out

for leadership, but it is the path that I have chosen. I can at least say that after this class and

getting to practice project management in a low-risk simulation, I feel that I can be better

prepared for what I may encounter in my future endeavors as a project manager. I want to remain

humble, as I will in no way ever be perfect as a project manager, so I need to be open to learning

from those around me, especially those I manage. However, I’d like to gain the confidence it

takes to do the job as well. If I am going to do this job, I want to have a good influence on those I

affect. I have a feeling being the best project manager I can will be a constant process of learning

from mistakes, from others, from the past, and maintaining a growth mindset through it all. I

don’t know that I necessarily want the leadership lifestyle as Ben Pandya describes it to be, but I

suppose if I am going to be one, I have to carry myself as such throughout my life. Maybe with

more practice over time, it’ll become less like an act, and more as if It were just an extension of

myself. That’s what I’m hoping for at least.

Throughout this class we interacted with a simulation game by Harvard Business

Publishing. It allowed us to control various parameters in project management such as scope,

schedule, budget, employment, outsourcing, and a few other aspects. My personal approach to

project management has definitely changed as a result of this class and having gone through the

simulation and its varied scenarios. Before coming into this class I completely had the notion that
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I could adhere to the project’s scope, schedule and budget, which were the three main parameters

throughout the simulation. I now realize that there will be inevitable trade offs to be made and

learned where I tend to put importance on in a project. I always aimed to have a better product be

made when possible than what management was expecting of me. To me, there is no point in

putting out a subpar product, even if its on time and under budget. In the Harvard Business

Publishing’s simulation it provided a great deal of feedback throughout the simulation including

ways to help with people management. The staff would give verbal feedback about their

situation throughout the weeks and I realized that listening closely to what they were saying and

adjusting how I approached meetings, and staffing as a result of their commentary helped a lot. It

is important to consider the needs of those you lead and be transparent. The entire time I

struggled greatly with remaining within the budget and schedule expected of me by management.

As far as takeaways that I can apply to my current profession goes, I am not in a position

of leadership where I work. However, I am in a position of leadership at my church and am also

currently working on a project to create an event for my high school classes’ ten year reunion. I

mentioned before that I don’t know if I am just feeling humble right now or if I really lack the

confidence to be a leader and project manager. I want to be humble so I can always learn. I feel

like the best leaders are ones that have a decent balance between humility and confidence in

themselves and their abilities. When it comes to managing the project for my high school

reunion, I work as a team with four other people. I am not the leader of the project but I am an

important component. We have definitely determined a decent schedule, budget and scope for

this project. Its been a battle none the less trying to create a great event for our fellow alumni and

do so within budget and on time, which is actually coming up in about three weeks from today.

We have sacrificed a lot of what we had originally planned for the event due to budget and time
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constraints but I feel like we have put a great deal of importance on what really matters to the

majority of people. While we determined we don’t need many of the elements we originally set

out to accomplish, we never sacrificed the quality of what we determined we did absolutely need

in the end. Having four other people on my team has helped us all to fill in the gaps in our

knowledge map throughout this project and gain a better understanding of what we are tackling

(Cleden, 61). We have outsourced, asked questions, done our research, and gained counsel from

others that have done their reunions for our high school before. Doing all of these things has

helped us to be more efficient throughout this project which will make it a success.

My advice to anyone starting this simulation would be to really analyze your results at the

end of each attempt. I didn’t do this every time but I would take screen shots of my final results

correlating to the decisions I made each week. I went through them and analyzed it to see which

decisions had the best impact. A part of what makes a great leader is being able to analyze the

facts that you have access to and following it up with intuition and wisdom (How to Be a Great

Leader: Project Management, 2012). Doing this also allowed me to see where any problems may

have occurred and find the root issue. I wanted to do this so that I may not just be treating the

problems with a symptomatic approach (Cleden, 43). Another piece of advice I would like to

offer is just to not be afraid to run the scenarios time and time again. You can learn from the past

this way and when you analyze your results like this you can also take what you have learned

into the next scenario as well. Being humble enough to know that its ok to make mistakes and

learn is another trait of a good leader (Waida, 2021). This can also help you to make better

decisions and take the best course of action instead of just being reactive when situations come

up in the scenarios (Cleden, 65). I suppose my last piece of advice would just be to listen. Listen
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to those you employ, your peers and to take counsel from others. It helps you to adjust how you

would do things by giving thoughts and ideas other than your own a try.

Overall, I feel as though becoming the best project manager and leader that you can

become has a lot to do with being willing to learn and grow, and having a healthy combination of

humility and confidence. Its important to to learn from those around you, from the past, from

those you influence directly, and from the facts and knowledge available to you. This simulation

gave us a wonderful low-risk opportunity to practice how we would be as project managers and

all the aspects that that involves. I hope to continue to grow my knowledge and skills to become

the most competent project manager I can be.

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References

Cleden, D. (2016). Managing project uncertainty. Taylor & Francis Group.

Waida, M. (2021, June 15). 10 Habits of Successful Project Managers [Web log post]. Retrieved

from https://www.wrike.com/blog/habits-successful-project-managers/

Projectmanager (Director). (2012, February 03). How to Be a Great Leader: Project

Management [Video file]. Retrieved July 28, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=Q8BvZ3gzsb8&ab_channel=ProjectManager

Project Management Simulation: Scope, Resources, Schedule V2, Robert D. Austin (Harvard

Business Publishing, 2013)