Project Management, Leadership & Entrepreneurship

The concept of “Project Leadership” has most probably not been echoed as much as the conventional concept of its counterpart “Project Management”. For various reasons, people think projects need to be managed well (on a task and milestone levels) more than anything else. In fact, that is true to some extent and normally we are obliged as project managers to communicate, manage and deliver some outputs as per the agreed with project sponsors.

However, when project managers are faced with a challenging issue that requires some unorthodox thinking for handling issues at hand, we are here not only delivering tasks and communicating risks to stakeholders. We are required to look at things from different angles and be entrepreneurial in how we devise solutions and look for alternatives. As it was always the case with the old battle between “Managers vs. Leaders” in organizations, we as project managers need to find that right mix to run projects smoothly. We can’t be doing only project management all the time, since we will not be different than project coordinators or admins. Similarly, we can’t only be inspirers and motivators, because there are some technical and procedural aspects of projects need to be closely monitored, on probably day-to-day levels.

So, how much we should apply leadership and how much management in each project? Well, the simple answer is “it depends”. Every project is unique so it is the expectations. But most likely, you will be required to deal in certain circumstances where your experience dictates the when and how. From my past experience, below are some situations where it requires you to be more “Leader” than “Manager” at projects:

Resolving conflicts between stakeholders and avoid negatives impacts on subsequent project phases.
Finding best routes and make the least damages when confronted when delays, scope creep & quality issues.
Staff turnover and low moral.
Negotiating change with vendors and business users.


On other hand, there will be some definite times where you are required to manage things from close proximity. Below are some of those vital moments in projects:

Number of tasks finished, pending and at risks.
Time and costs analysis.
Recourses re-allocation, deployment and release.
Vendors’ technical documentations and contractual review.
Risks Analysis and mitigation plans.
Daily, weekly and monthly progress reports.


Maybe, one would argue and say projects need to be managed more than being led for a simple obvious fact that projects are tasks oriented and procedural in nature. However, there are some thoughts to be well analyzed also when it comes to “Entrepreneurial” attitudes and skills sets that are often assumed by stakeholders that their project managers do possess. Despite being very situational and applicable in certain setups, project managers need to add their own entrepreneurial touches to projects that they run irrespective of the organizational clear guidelines. These “tricky maneuvers” are very challenging to adopt in organizational context and a project manager needs to be very skillful to apply. Below are some situations where you need to think more of an entrepreneur in projects:

Anticipating market dynamics and be prepared for “change”.
Adding value for post go-live and during business as usual operations.
Not to be “too immersed” into project requirements and loose touch with reality.


The last one is counterintuitive and very complex to apply. Project managers have to stick to the requirements signed off by the business. However, business users sometimes are too focused on the deliverables and loose the sense of what should be delivered on the delivery date. Project managers need to envision the go-live date and see if those requirements will be “workable/applicable” requirements and functionalities on the first day of go-live. They need to have that sense of being flexible and build some contingencies so the solutions being delivered are not too constrained for a change that would be inevitable.

It is not an easy task to know how much of each management, leadership and entrepreneurship one needs to apply. But for sure, the more we do projects, the more we become conscious of the right mixture that we need to apply so our projects have a better chance of success.

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