Review By: Jan Scott
04/29/2011

"In Leadership Principles for Project Success," Thomas Juli makes a distinction between a project manager and a project leader. He feels that managing a project according to standard project management techniques is not enough. To be successful, the manager must show leadership as defined by the following principles:

• Building Vision–sharing a common vision of the product and having the same goals and understanding about progress

   

• Nurturing Collaboration–building and maintaining a team
• Promoting Performance–creating and maintaining an environment that stimulates teams and individuals to high performance
• Cultivating Learning–allowing time for the sharing and learning from mistakes
• Ensuring Results–project delivery of the results defined in the vision

I think we all would agree that these principles are critical for building and delivering any kind of project, and all of us aspire to following them. Juli does a good job of explaining these principles and how they are interrelated.

However, he doesn't spend much time discussing how to achieve them. He has an impressive body of experience, but he does not translate that experience into concrete examples that would help the reader learn to implement the principles. The chapters tend to repeat the same generalities. Only in the final chapter does he talk about how to become an effective leader. The templates in the appendices also offer a clue to his thoughts on implementation.

The book is a quick read, though, and offers food for thought on how the principles and workshops he describes might or might not work within the culture of a particular organization. An experienced project manager or leader will find little or nothing new here, but a first-time project manager might find inspiration.