Project Leadership: From Theory to Practice

Project Leadership:

From Theory to Practice By Jeffrey K. Pinto and others Project Management Institute, 1998

Reviewed by LTC Kenneth H. Rose (USA, Ret.), a Project Manager with the Waste Policy Institute in San Antonio, TX, and a former member of the Army AcQuisition Corps.

In project management literature, a generally accepted axiom suggests that projects usually fail not on technical merit, but on matters related to people. Authors then usually proceed to prescribe technical tools in great detail, giving short shrift to leadership skills that would counter the threat they just defined. Project Leadership: From Theory to Practice by Jeffrey K. Pinto, Peg Thomas, Jeffrey Trailer, Todd Palmer, and Michele Govekar breaks this mold and focuses on leadership in project management environments. The book offers a solid grounding across a broad range of theory, then walks the reader through application of the theory in the practical context of project management. At less than 150 pages, the book appears at first to be one of those easy reads that populate today's bookstores. It is not. It is densely packed with concepts and models for action that should be perused with great care, not for mere awareness, but for understanding, retention, and future application.

The authors discuss principal theories of leadership, bridging contingency and universal perspectives. They favor a transformational approach that enables a leader to link people and tasks to achieve success in dynamic, often chaotic environments. They describe accountability for results as a key to project success, and they provide a model and procedures for establishing and controlling accountability within the project team.

The project vision, which is often little more than motivational mush, receives serious treatment as an essential foundation for project success. The authors describe the role and effects of a project vision and provide a disciplined development approach that goes far beyond the cheerleading approach that often seems to be in vogue.

Team building and ethics both receive candid, direct treatment that addresses promises and pitfalls, and charts a course for negotiating a successful transit through these challenging areas.

The authors present an excellent integration of leading and managing, showing the essential role that each plays in project strategy. And, politics rears its not-so-ugly head as an eternal aspect of any project-one that, if handled well, can be a key to influencing others in achieving project goals.

The last chapter provides a synthesis of the book's important points, restating the basic premise that project management is a i "leader-intensive undertaking" and that leadership is not a onebest-way task, but rather a many-faceted collection of decisions, attitudes, and actions.

Project Leadership: From Theory to Practice is a continuous journey, and the book should be taken as a whole to receive the full benefit. It offers a distinct contribution to project management leadership literature for new or experienced project managers.