Finding energy in strategic project management: An essay in honour of DeanFang

A development project is an intervention that is designed to makes things b etter in a particular context or situation. It is always a problem to know what to do for the best. The Logical Framework, evaluated in this journal l ast year (Gasper, 2000), is a project-planning and management technique wid ely applied by multilateral as well as bilateral donor agencies in internat ional development work. It was designed to prevent project managers from si mply offering to do what they had always done before and instead to think s trategically about cause and effect in context. The present article respect s this logical approach but focuses attention upon context. Context is cons idered in the right-hand column of a Log Frame. The article seeks inspirati on in ancient Chinese concepts of energy: Yin-Yang and Wu-Wei. The search i s for a form of project management that minimizes energy consumption in its own internal processes and maximizes energy release in the context that th e project seeks to transform. Context has to be examined for opportunities rather than constraints. The article advocates management by being a still presence, as against management by rushing about. It borrows the old-fashio ned idea about being a catalyst and validates the now fashionable concepts of enabling and empowering. It also rediscovers at least some virtue in the Blueprint Project. The article seeks to be practical. A management develop ment project in the Northern Cape Province of South Africa provides some il lustrations and an incomplete example of what might be entailed if energy i s brought into the equations of project management. Copyright (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.