Angelina Carleton
Jul 31, 20223 min
A few weeks ago, I attended a training session for global project planning. It was an eye-opening experience.
Legacy—a term used in the field of project management—describes the ideas, methods, and practices that have been passed down from one generation to another. Learning legacy means understanding how your organization has done things in the past and incorporating those approaches into your future plans. In many ways, it's about being mindful of what has worked (and hasn't worked) in the past so you can avoid making similar mistakes moving forward.
Learning legacy can be tricky because it involves taking something that is inherently local and making it applicable on a global scale. But if we want to succeed as project managers as we grow in the changing times, we need to think beyond our individual organizations—we need to think about how we can make our work meaningful across borders and cultures!
In project management, legacy refers to the past decisions that affect future decisions. It's important to consider the past when planning for the future because it will directly impact what happens next. The term comes from the idea that we're all building on each other's successes and failures; what happened before will affect what happens next.
The reason why this is important in global project planning, if this is an aspect of your legacy, is because different cultures have different ways of doing things. We may think something is logical or normal, but not every culture thinks the same way we do here in North America or the united States republic. For example, if we're working with people from Japan on a project, they might be more reserved than someone from Brazil who is more outgoing by nature; understanding these differences can help us better collaborate with our colleagues across the globe so everyone feels included and respected.
Understanding how cultures differ across countries is crucial when doing business internationally because it can help us build stronger relationships with our counterparts and create better products overall. If we don't take these differences into account when working with people across borders, we might end up alienating them instead of including them; this would make collaboration much harder and lead to less effective outcomes overall.
What does learning legacy mean in global project planning?
I'm not sure if this is something specific to my niche, but it seems like every project has a piece of history attached to it. Maybe this is just because I work with entrepreneurs, but it feels like all of the clients I've worked for have had some kind of backstory that's been passed down from one generation of employees or business family member to another. Sometimes these stories are meant to provide motivation or inspiration; other times they're meant to warn people away from making certain kinds of mistakes; and sometimes they're just really cool stories that everyone likes hearing again and again.
Regardless of what they're intended to do, though, these stories all serve one important purpose: they help us understand where we came from so that we can better anticipate where we're going next.
Understanding where your organization has been in the past will help you better understand how it will behave in the future—and this understanding is crucial when you're trying to plan global projects across different cultures as a part of your or your company’s legacy!
If you don't know anything about your partner company's history or culture, then how can you possibly predict how they'll react to any given situation? And if you can't predict how they'll react, then how can you possibly expect to collaborate successfully with them on future projects?
That's why it's so important for any and all of us, working across borders, to take some time and learn about the historical contexts surrounding our or their partners' companies before trying to get anything done together. The development of your legacy goals, and its milestones, will thank you in making it easier on you and everyone else involved.