During the two-hour workshop, Dr. Sikander Khan and Elisabeth Berg Khan shared their views and experiences regarding what are the contributing elements for a successful project.
Firstly on conceptual level, it’s necessary to understand what a project is about, which includes a proper definition of project, such as scope, life cycle, resources, and people.
Dr. Sikander elaborated the concepts from following aspects: what comes before the project life cycle; how to find possible projects; working out which projects are worth pursuing with value creation; getting to know the people who will be involved in a project; projects are identified and prioritized based on the business value they can deliver, and their relative importance to the future of the organization as a whole.
Many factors contribute to a successful project, yet the risk factors are common. The risks lie in unclear goals, poorly defined team roles, lack of motivation, poor communication, poor leadership, turnover of project members, and dysfunctional behavior.
Though the tangible contents are inevitably important, people are actually the most emphasized elements in modern society’s project management. Dr. Elisabeth Kan continued on this discussion about the leadership of a project. The term Leader Intelligence is introduced, which includes the leaders EQ, IQ, SQ (spiritual). A successful leader is the one who is able to tell what to do via his IQ, why to do through his SQ, and how to do with his EQ.
During the workshop, many theories and cases were brought forward to illustrate the concepts, like how Tata failed to execute its ‘USD$ 2K economic car’, and how Steve Jobs so self-centered on his goals while putting what he needed and getting rid of the unnecessary, how the joint-venture for the aluminum locomotive train found and the hurdles incurred.
This is a meaningful and insightful workshop for students, who are engaged in the iLab project and project related tasks in the near future.
Written by 2015 IMBA NA Yong
March 17, 2016
