Vicki James, PMP, CBAP, PMI-PBA, CSM

formerly of Professional Project Services, LCC

Tag Archives: servant leadership

Guest Post: Vision the future together as a servant leader by Joseph Flahiff

1 Comment Posted by Vicki James on March 31, 2012

I received the following in my inbox the other day. I love the message and wanted to share. Joseph does not have it up as a blog but instead has allowed me to post as a guest post here. You can learn more about Joseph at his LinkedIn profile and his company website, www.whitewaterprojects.com.

“The Plan is nothing, Planning is Everything!” ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

You probably have heard this quote. Have you spent much time thinking about it? If the value of planning is not the plan but the process, the thinking that goes into the planning , then doesn’t it make sense to involve as many people in that process as possible (and reasonable), to spread that value around? When people have a shared vision of the future that they have worked together to generate, then they know better how to make decisions in the moment, in the trenches. This results in two highly valuable benefits. It makes progress occur faster, because the team isn’t waiting for leadership to make decisions they could make themselves. It also frees up your project leadership who are (I bet) already overworked and have a hard time getting to issues in a timely manner anyway.

As a servant leader it is critically important that you be comfortable, no not just comfortable, that you passionately desire, that the team can self-manage and solve as many problems as possible, without you. For beginning project leaders this can be threatening. But in the end it allows you to leverage yourself into larger and more challenging opportunities.

So, If the planning is everything then the planning should be done by as much of the team as possible.