The Spirit of Project Management

Judi Neal, Alan Harpham

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351881623
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business generale
• Index: Business

Projects have always been essentially human endeavours. Large modern projects are generally highly complex, fraught with technical difficulties and supported by diverse, often apparently conflicted stakeholders. The spirituality that originally defined some of the great construction projects of the classical era surely has a role in project management today. The Spirit of Project Management explains the context for spirituality in projects and explores how it can be used to create a larger sense of purpose and achievement; to help encourage an esprit de corps amongst all those involved; to act as a touchstone for ethical and sustainable decision-making. This is a very pragmatic book. The first part includes an explanation and a variety of useful models for understanding the significance and value of spirituality in projects. Judi Neal and Alan Harpham devote the second part of the book to help you integrate these ideas into your day-to-day management of projects. Thus there are chapters on spirituality from the perspective of the individual, the project team, the project organization and even project management within a sustainable world framework. Read this book, use the ideas to help you articulate your projects; engage and sustain your project team and your stakeholders; and frame how you work in terms of your organisation, society and the environment.

Part I
The Context for Spirituality and Project Management

The book is divided into two parts: one which provides background material and one which provides practical application material. In part I, we provide a context for spirituality and project management. We take a look at the background of project management by exploring the history of the field and making the case that spirituality has always been interwoven into the work of project management, although it has seldom been explicit. We then take a look at the history of spirituality in the workplace as an emerging field.

Chapter 1
Background of Project Management in a Spiritual Context

In this chapter, we look at projects in history and their connection to religious and/or spiritual purposes. Project management has ancient and sacred roots, and it is our hope that this book will help to re-inspire the connection between spirituality and project management.

Let’s start at the beginning of civilisation. In the early days of project management it would seem most major projects were created for a spiritual purpose. This was often based on a belief in an afterlife and the need to go into this next life in the best possible condition. These projects were funded by extremely wealthy rulers, emperors, and kings, who literally owned everything in their lands — the land, the natural resources, and the people (Figure 1.1).

Earliest among these projects are the ancient pyramids of Egypt¹ and South America,² circa 2000BC, built to such high standards that we still do not know how they were achieved! Huge blocks of stone were cut and laid in such a way that it is impossible to insert a piece of paper between them. What was their purpose? Today we are beginning to know something of the power of pyramids to preserve meat kept in its center of gravity where the embalmed bodies of the pharaohs were laid to rest, often surrounded by riches to use in the next life.

Figure 1.1 Early major projects Sources: Hagia Sofia © Uozdil | Dreamstime.com; Terracotta Warriors © Contax66 | Dreamstime.com; Rumkale © Hayk Harutyunyan | Dreamstime.com; Great Umayyad © Angela Ostafichuk | Dreamstime.com; Mayan Pyramid © Joao Virissimo | Dreamstime.com; Gisa Pyramid © Francisco Caravana | Dreamstime.com

Preserving life to go on to the next life was of utmost importance, whatever that next life might have been.

Then, at Xian in China, we have the extraordinary discovery of the Emperor’s huge burial site,³ of which only a fraction has so far been excavated. Acres of land covering a whole army of terracotta warriors and then a circus and other entertainers, a zoo, and a menagerie of terracotta and bronze animals have been discovered, not to mention all the chariots and other transportation, all ready for this one man and his afterlife.

This was a dangerous time and place to be the Project Manager as the emperor usually insisted that all those who knew their way into the tombs, and the treasure stored there, should be killed at the end of the construction phase of the project. So the Project Managers took all their secrets to the grave with them, leaving no possibility of the secrets being sold or traded.

Then later, the earliest civilisations building in Syria near the Euphrates had fresh running water and sewerage systems working around five centuries BC. The Euphrates is thought by many to be the setting for the Garden of Eden.

Damascus, Syria, is the world’s oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. In its midst is the Great Mosque, originally built as a Greco-Roman temple to Zeus in 64 CE, converted to a Christian basilica dedicated by Constantine to John the Baptist in 391, becoming a mosque in 634 CE. Inside is a shrine to John the Baptist venerated by both Christians and Muslims, and it is the fourth holiest place in Islam.

Later, from 500 BCE to 400 CE, we have examples of first the Greeks and then the Romans building extremely fine buildings to meet and live in, as well as some magnificent temples. Their ruins can still be seen today in countries around the Mediterranean and were once the envy of many other parts of the world.

Christianity became a force in the world around 2,000 years ago. The Roman Emperor Constantine began a magnificent church project in Constantinople (now Istanbul), a huge church named the Hagia Sophia or Divine Wisdom (circa 360 AD). Constantine originally built a much smaller church, and it was Justinian who built the present building, in 532 CE, after the previous basilica burnt down. This too, like many churches, was later converted to a mosque and is now a museum. From the time of the Prophet Mohammed onwards, Islam erected beautiful buildings to worship and honor Allah and these too have stood the test of time, as well as inspiring their builders and visitors.

Many beautiful churches and cathedrals were built from stone throughout Europe (circa 1100–1700 AD) with many artisans being employed in their construction. These are buildings that were built to last and continue to attract visitors and worshippers from all over the world.

More recently (circa 1700s), the Shah Jahan built the magnificent tomb for his wife, Mumtaz Mahal, in white marble inlaid with gemstones, the Taj Mahal. His original plan was to build a black mirror image building for his own tomb on the opposite bank of the river and then link the two with a suspension bridge made of pure silver. In the event, before he could do this, his son took him captive and murdered his own brothers in order to inherit the kingdom. This prevented the further construction, but left one of the Seven Wonders of the World with its many visitors to admire her tomb. It is worth adding that rather than put the architects to death, Jahan offered them all land to own and settle on so that they would not go off and build anything similar for another emperor – their descendants still live around Agra to this day.

The people who built the buildings were clearly inspired in their work. The purpose of many of the buildings was to reach for the transcendent and to help the people who used the buildings to do the same. Many buildings were used to worship a God or higher power and glorious images were used to assist in that process.

As human beings evolved and developed over the ages and as their consciousness has expanded, so too has the nature of projects, moving on from construction into science and engineering projects and, more recently, into IT, communications, aerospace, pharmaceuticals and energy. Project Managers of modern day projects are still seeking the same kind of esprit de corps in their project teams, high innovation and creativity and inspirational leadership, as existed in these earlier projects. They are looking for that feeling that comes from creating something much bigger and greater than one’s self, and for the benefit of others.

Mankind has always felt the pull to create with others inspiring and lasting projects to honor the transcendent and the self. If spirituality is truly that which gives meaning and purpose in life then it seems very obvious that work is a major provider of spirituality and that projects within work, those one-off events, have the capacity to provide many with real meaning and purpose in their work.

Projects, like human beings, also have lifecycles. Humans are born, grow and develop, become productive and re-produce, wane, slow down, and ultimately die. They start with a lot of uncertainty and head for the only certainty in life — their death. Projects start as a germ of an idea, become a concept, are defined, designed and firmed up. They are then manufactured or created for real, being put to use or sold, until eventually they reach the end of their lifecycle and are killed off, taken down or perhaps apart, or simply fall down to be overtaken by the next idea or project.

Projects are run and delivered usually by project teams and these go through stages too. The most commonly known are group development states of forming, norming, storming, performing, and finally adjourning (Tuckman 2001) when the team completes the project and parts company into the individuals who go off to new projects and new teams. Many find this cycle of creation ending and starting again very invigorating for a fulsome life – some find the ending very sad.

In the 1960s we saw the advent of space projects. Yuri Gagarin, in 1961, was the first cosmonaut from Russia and then we saw the American race to put a man on the moon in 1969 — the Apollo space project. While not originally initiated as a spiritual project, it has been fascinating to see how many of the Apollo Astronauts, once they have seen their home from outer space, the friendly, pretty little blue planet – earth – have become very interested in their spiritual side.

Edgar Mitchell was so in awe of looking back at earth from space that he experienced a spiritual transcendence that was to define his life’s work. He founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences, which seeks to take a scientific approach to understanding human consciousness and the experience of transcendence. Indeed, we understand that the first thing that Neil Armstrong did after landing was to seek a little time out to share a communion wafer he had taken with him, just before opening the door and making that “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

It is not often that one hears the words “spirituality” and “project management” uttered in the same sentence, and yet this review of the history of project management from our earliest times points to a much stronger connection between the two than one might first imagine. We believe that spirituality is an inherent part of any project, just as spirituality is an inherent part of any human being.

In this chapter we have looked at how the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• PART I THE CONTEXT FOR SPIRITUALITY AND PROJECT MANAGEMENT
• PART II INTEGRATING SPIRITUALITY AND PROJECT MANAGEMENT
• Appendix A: International Faith and Spirit at Work Awards
• Appendix B: Questions for Discernment and Discussion within Each Stage of Spiral Dynamics
• References
• Index
• Advances in Project Management