When I first got into the industry I was younger and bullish. I’d be, ‘I know what the right way is’. But I learned the importance of being able to go home and put your head on the pillow with a clear conscience.
My days were spent juggling client and consultant overwhelm. Back then, traditional project management systems meant projects were often stressful. Clients investing millions felt anxious and didn’t enjoy the experience. Budgets, deadlines and red tape stymied builders and consultants amid an adversarial blame game atmosphere.
And yes, projects were impacted. But what I noticed was those with a better energy and experience had better commercial outcomes and performed better across time, cost and quality principles. They had equal energy, time and cost exchange between all stakeholders.
Interesting. And eventually the penny dropped. Wanting to get off the cycle of going from job to job and never being fulfilled, I knew there was another way of doing things.
In 2014 I founded MG Group with a specific purpose—to do something the industry had never seen before. I didn’t know it at the time but as I focussed on the company’s purpose and meaning, I realised we were actually pioneering heart led project management.
How do I define that? Heart led project management means taking our expertise and high performance in traditional project management systems and processes and expanding that into the fields of emotional intelligence and holistic strategy and focusing on the flow and momentum of a project’s energy.
It’s mastering the collective energy of the project team by empowering them to take full ownership of their individual roles.
It was so unconventional that it took me a while to process what I felt so strongly about and I didn’t really share it. Now I’m willing to take the risk.
At MG Group heart led project management means we focus on the unseen, the intrinsics, that usually get overlooked on building sites.
It’s a higher form of decision making and intelligence. It’s not just about looking at data and analytics, it’s about also reading the room and taking on the whole situation so the project and its management becomes holistic.
It’s about asking better questions, about interpreting the individual and human elements. It’s about shifting the collaborative and collective energy using integrity and ethics, creating flow and momentum on each project.
At MG we treat our professional colleagues with respect and show compassion with boundaries so that they feel that spark and are passionate about creating the world’s strongest, most beautiful and innovative buildings.
The key thing to know is that we can do this only because we’re already high performing at delivering projects via traditional project management processes.
The only way we felt we could improve and break the traditional industry performance ceiling was by exploring and pioneering a new realm. We exist to constantly evolve and do things smarter and ethically for high performance and great results.
Heart led project management has tangible benefits because when you care about what you’re doing you see patterns that others don’t and our results in the last seven years underline that.
