Take it easy on being creative in PM. PM is done by people utilizing ideas and principles that are defined by unbreakable corporate relationships and dynamics. You may apply some degree of innovation; but in the long run, it all boils down to those defined lines of interconnection and forces beyond any person’s control.

Yes, and it scares the corporate mind – it is so unpredictable and incomprehensible. Unless you were trained early on in freedom and creativity, you can’t have the legs to last the adventure.

Developing a Project Management program for your company can be a messy thing without the help of an experienced and well-trained consulting company with years of track record on the matter. Dyman’s approach allows your “project and program managers to adjust to and incorporate overall, departmental or specific project goals while keeping standardized levels of performance consistent with company-wide objectives.” A standardized performance is essential in unifying the company’s operations as well as assuring that the individual staff members grow with the company. Likewise, this gives out the signal to its clients that the company is highly coordinated and that each component or part of the organization is aware of what is happening to the other parts, thus, allowing communication or interaction to proceed with efficiency. The only setback for this general approach is that it somehow constricts creativity in the individual and, hence, in the overall operational picture. For a person to be able to truly innovate and come up with outstanding progress in ideas and strategy, he or she must be allowed complete freedom or autonomy to perform within the parameters of the job but with no boundaries or limits to the methods or tools that will be needed to accomplish the task. This does not seem to be a comfortable or safe working arrangement for most companies; hence, not many apply the method effectively, if at all. This requires allowing people to have the ability to decide independently without supervision or without prior or final authorization as to the ultimate solutions to be applied in any particular issue. The main objection to this type of management approach is that most traditionally-oriented companies follow the line of corporate organizational integrity or, to use a less palatable word, rigidity. This constraining approach expects employees to toe the main company line: verbatim and modus operandi, that is, verbally and operationally. A corporate manual of operations lays down the basic tenets and principles of the company culture and enforces the business code according to certain implementing guidelines and mechanisms which subsequently make up the body and soul of the company, so to speak. Well and good. As long as the company can attain its goals and keeps the bottom line healthy, there should be no issue about how the work is done. However, project management, as the phrase suggests, contains variables which cannot be easily boxed in or defined according to any one-fits-all approach. In the end, the individual worker, looking into the intricacies and uniqueness of a particular problem of a client will have to adapt and innovate in order to come up with a customized solution that will be more efficient and less cumbersome. Perhaps, this is the way Dyman works or operates. Their website does not seem to mention any customized solutions to its clients. It takes a free mind to go through this path of work. However, the rewards are more fulfilling and inspiring.

I agree with the above observation. Protection is not as simple as downloading the latest anti-virus program. It is knowing how to counteract cyber attacks as they arrive and even before they do.

As a friend told me: 20 years of doing the same thing is not expertise, merely routine experience. Innovation, on the other hand, is true progress.