However, you may feel that, as courses go, they were not effective, because you may have noticed that most (if not all) of the participants have gone back to work after the course, only to do their work exactly as before. So, in fact these courses had no real impact on the individual or the company. So, the company was not transformed in any way shape or form. Money was spent on training the staff with no tangible results.
In my opinion, there is a simple reason why these types of leadership and project management courses are not effective. It is because the course material does not directly relate to the participant’s day to day tasks and activities. In short, the course material is not specific enough. It has not been put together or customised for that particular organisation.
If you, as a CEO or a Managing Director or a Department head, want your Project Managers to deliver the profitability that you are after, you should consider providing project management courses that leave no room for ambiguity. You should help Project Managers learn how, exactly you want them to manage your projects.
This obviously required the organisation to actually have pretty detailed project management procedures that can be used to develop the training program. If you don’t have detailed custom-made project management procedures for your projects, then you really can’t expect the Project Managers to consistently deliver the projects as you want.
So, if your Project Managers are consistently not delivering the profits that they had estimated at the planning stage of their projects, then it could mean one of the following:
- Your project management procedures are not clear or detailed enough for the Project Manager to ensure his/her projects deliver the estimated profit amounts; or
- Your Project Manager has not been trained to deliver the projects according to your procedures; or
- Your Project Manager is not following the procedures (in which case you would know early on in the project’s life); or
- Your Project Manager is not able to be a Project Manager; or
- It might not be anybody’s fault. It might be just the nature of that particular project; or
- A combination of some or all of the above.
So, it is the senior management’s task to figure out, which of the above reasons are applicable to their organisation and take the necessary actions.
Too often, senior technical staff who are exceptionally good at their technical work get promoted in to a Project Manager’s role. Whilst they are technically excellent, they have not really been trained to be Project Managers. Hence, in a lot of cases, it might be that the company has not prepared and delivered a bespoke custom-made training and mentoring program for their Project Managers. 
So, I will leave you with these questions:
- Are your project management procedures detailed and specific enough for your type of projects?
- Have you developed and delivered a bespoke training program for your Project Managers?
- Are you monitoring the performance of your Project Managers in accordance with these clear procedures?
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