Essay For Ogl 321
Essay For Ogl 321
Essay For Ogl 321
PAPER 5
Paper 5
Megan Henderson
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
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
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
.
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References
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/
v=Q8BvZ3gzsb8&ab_channel=ProjectManager
Project Management Simulation: Scope, Resources, Schedule V2, Robert D. Austin (Harvard