Project Director, Manager, Coordinator or Leader: Who am I?

In this podcast, Ricardo raises one question and makes assumptions about why some organizations sometimes provide different titles for whom is responsible for the project management.

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Episode transcript

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Speaker 1 (4s): Hello, everyone. Welcome to the five Minutes PM. Podcast Today like to share with you an email or received another date talking about Ricardo. Can you explain that difference between profit Director Project Manager Prozac Leader or prove it Coordinator and then I will strength to think. Okay. Lets think about standards. Lets think about methodology elects, trying to fit this. And at the end, I need to recognize that this is much more related to do the organizational structure than to the project itself.

So usually when someone receives a title of project coordinator or a project leader, usually first this level has a limited authority. So if it's someone with a quite limited authority, of course you can see exceptions on that, but limited authority, a very limited scope off the delivery. So this is somebody like a pro is an expediter. A project is a cuter. You know, someone that just manage the execution of the project and with very limited authority, it's someone that you a point, but the decision realized on you and this person just do this operational work of making things happen on the Project on the manager side.

Then we are talking about a little bit higher level. So it's someone on the middle management that can handle the Project and have some more authority. And this is where most of the project managers are in the case off the Project Director I have two thinks to say to you first, this Project must be a very relevant product to the organization. So we usually, where you find this Project Director position, you find in big ERP implementations, you find those in very big capital projects.

You find this in projects that requires a lot of investment are very complex. And then you empower the manager of the project with the title of Project Director. So this person will give feedback and will be supervisor by a much senior level. This person, she, or he will have much more authority to make decisions on behalf of the project. But the, again, this must justify because you cannot create a Project Director for a very irrelevant Project.

So it's a very, very important point because many people think, Oh, I want to have a manager project manager title because there's will, we'll be perceived at, at the higher level at tokenization. You need just one understand because there are also many exceptions to that. For example, in factories, the title of Manager is a very high level title. For example, in, at the factory Manager is someone that's supervised all the production lines in a factory many, many times in, in order places, a sales manager is just a sales person and with no direct reports, nothing.

So it's very important that you understand that this is very, I think that the cultural aspects and at the end, I want you to think that this matters less. It's much more important to see what it is, autonomy and empowerment. You have to deliver your project because if you have a very complex project, even with a title of director, but you don't have the autonomy and the alternative to make changes you're in trouble may be it's much better to have a title of Project Coordinator with the right of empowerment.

So it's not only the title. The title is a cultural aspect of the power and the structural of the organization. What matters really is the empowerment for big projects. The project manager must have them Powerment to do the work. It was smaller project, this empowerment it's maybe not as required as the auditors because the Project is much less complex. You don't need to create a Pandia of methodologies and this to solve a smaller problem. So think about that about all the school dropout aspects behind this and try to focus on which kind of authority do you need to deliver the project.

Maybe this will come with offensive. The title may be not, but this is much less relevant than the results of your Project. Think about that. Then see you next week with another five minutes PM. Podcast.

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Project Director, Manager, Coordinator or Leader: Who am I?

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