The significance of organizational behavior to project management (1)

One of the MBA courses is organizational behavior. I personally feel that it is better for project managers to choose from other subjects.

Organizational behavior is defined as a research area that explores the impact of individuals, groups, and structures on organizational behavior.

In general, it is to study the behavior rules of a person. For example, how the level of human needs affects motivation and human behavior. It is not suitable for people who are hungry to die.

Study the behavior rules of a group, such as how herd psychology is generated and how to prevent it.

Study the influence of organizational structure on personal behavior. For example, under the bureaucratic architecture and under the matrix architecture, people's behavior will be different.

 

The above is undoubtedly meaningful for project management.

 

For project management, the difficulty is often not reflected in the various chapters of PMBOK, but how to coordinate relations with various personnel.

Customers, bosses, team members, support personnel, and process improvement personnel often make things quite annoying.

However, people's behaviors can also be reflected in a general rule. For example, when the income is lower than a certain level (according to statistics, the US-style 40 thousand yuan/year), the income has the largest incentive effect on people,

However, other factors will become more influential, such as the fun work, work location, and colleagues.

 

Organizational behavior is about these things, so we have reason to believe it is helpful for project management.

 

 

The following describes the significance of project management through some specific knowledge points and simple cases:

(This is mainly based on Stephen P. Robin's book organizational behavior)

Some people often publish interview questions from large companies. In this case, we may find some problems inexplicable. For example, why is the cover of the famous sewer circular? How many gas stations are there in the United States? And so on.

In fact, this originated from the basic logic of teaching smart people to do anything (Bill Gates ). If we find talent first, we will continue to get talent, and vice versa, we will become the base camp of mediocre talents (Jeff Bezos ).

 

But in fact, this simple logic is problematic. It is common for a bunch of smart people to do silly things. It is unlikely that people at the upper level will have lower levels of intelligence, however, famous dummies are often made by high-level talents.

Intelligence itself can be further subdivided: Cognitive intelligence (fast response, inductive reasoning, etc.), social intelligence (social ability ),

Cultural intelligence (in case you work with North Koreans, you cannot scold the highest leader), emotional intelligence (you cannot get angry and control your emotions ).

 

In project management, we need to use these dimensions to measure ourselves. In this regard, we need to supplement our shortcomings.

First, we need to measure other people and investigate the causes of the current results. For example, the background and working hours may affect a person's multi-dimensional intelligence.

If people in the team have obvious shortcomings, they should help to correct them, but most of the time they should avoid them. The current situation of a person often has profound historical roots, it is difficult for you to allow people with poor emotional intelligence to suddenly control yourself.

The core of avoidance of various conflicts is human talent. For example, a person with high cognitive intelligence and poor emotional intelligence is suitable for work with high technical difficulty and less external communication.

Of course, this tests the skill of managers and requires the knowledge of people.