What a lovely dumpster fire PMI (the Project Management Institute) has started! In its infinite wisdom, PMI decided to change the definition of a “project” in the eighth edition of the PMBOK Guide:
- The old definition was: “a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result.”
- The new definition is: “a temporary initiative in a unique context undertaken to create value.”
Two words in the new definition jumped out at me: “initiative” and “value.”
Let’s look at “value” first.
To start with, Merriam-Webster’s thesaurus has 106 synonyms for “value” sorted by the following five usages:
- Worth – 16 synonyms
- Advantage – 11 synonyms
- Importance – 15 synonyms
- To Treasure – 29 synonyms
- To Estimate – 35 synonyms
Here are the screenshots for each of those five areas and 106 synonyms:
My personal favorite synonyms from the above lists are: worth, price, cost, virtue, perfection, worship, grace, guesstimate, and fee.
To assert that the word “value” is ambiguous would be the understatement of the year.
Definitions will Make or Break Whatever it is you Want to Achieve!
If assumptions are the mother of all foul-ups, then ambiguities are its evil twin sister. Distilling agreement on the Definition of “value” becomes almost impossible.
If you cannot have common Definitions on which you can easily Distill agreement, then you have already lost the game when it is time to Deliver the Vision for the desired Product, Service, or Result. You can forget about iteratively leading and Driving the project to success.
The Four Whys
In his classic book, “Value Forward Selling: How to Sell to Management,” on pages 25 to 26, Paul DiModica rightly points out that there are only three main reasons an executive does anything:
- How to increase income
- How to decrease expenses
- How to manage their business risks
Paul advises us that “To successfully communicate and/or sell to executives, you must stop thinking like a program manager and start thinking like a strategist who is a pain relief specialist” (I slightly modified Paul’s quote for context), and I completely agree with Paul’s thinking on this one.
In my book, “The Nehemiah Effect” (2014), I quoted Paul and shared his “Three Whys” list above as a rationale for developing a unique value-proposition, and Paul points out in his book that “Management buying decisions are centered around (these) three elements.”
While I like Paul’s structure and agree with its simplicity, I updated and modified his “Three Whys” slightly, turned it into the “Four Whys,” and added a number four, “do the right thing,” to his list in my following two books, “Flow” (2018) and “Living Leadership” (2025):
- Increase revenues,
- Decrease costs,
- Get rid of or mitigate risks, and
- Do the right thing.
The Four Whys occur at all four levels: the Individual, Team, Product (including service or result), and Organization.
Revenue is first on this because if you have no cash flow, your company will quickly cease to exist. That should be the number one priority for any organization that desires to continue surviving. Even if you are a non-profit organization, if you have no revenue, you will have no budget and will be unable to continue your operations. This isn’t rocket science.
Let’s look at “Initiative” next.
We’re already just over three pages long, and I haven’t even started on “initiative” yet. Again, Merriam-Webster’s thesaurus has 24 synonyms for the word “initiative.”
- The picture for that looks like this:
My favorite synonyms from this list are “killer instinct” and “self-reliance.” Now that’s initiative!
Most projects are like giving the project manager a barely working flashlight and then sending them into a dark cave where a big, hairy monster with very sharp teeth lives.
We all know what the outcome of that will be.
Finally…
With over 130 synonyms involved for just these two words, it reminds me of Peter Drucker’s famous quote:
- “Only three things happen naturally in organizations: friction, confusion, and underperformance…everything else requires Leadership!”
Should I be giving kudos to PMI for completely muddying up the waters with the new definition?
Or should I be giving them praise for taking a step in the right direction to help project managers communicate better with executives?
What do you think?