Project Management on the Brain

By Wanda L. Curlee

Could neuroscience be the next big thing for the project management profession?

Today, there are many theories about leadership, management, and psychology, yet, no one is quite certain how the brain works in concert with these theories—or even if it does.

In the pursuit of more information, neuroscience—including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) —is being used to study what the brain activity of business-minded individual’s looks like during thought and during motion. (This technology can map new neural pathways as they are created—pathways that can be created until death.)

Already this scientific field is creating new fields of study across the business landscape. Neuroeconomics, for example, is “the application of neuroscientific methods to analyze and understand economically relevant behavior such as evaluating decisions, categorizing risks and rewards, and interactions among economic agents,” according to Dr. Zainal Ariffin Ahmad, a professor in the Business Research for Applied Innovations in Neurosciences (BRAIN) Lab at the Universiti Sains Malaysia’s Graduate School of Business.

There’s also neuroaccounting, neuroethics, neuroleadership and neurogoernance.

With portfolio management still in its infancy, neuroleadership and neurogovernance could potentially assist portfolio managers. By extracting knowledge from the sciences of neuroleadership and neurogovernance, PMI could differentiate itself and its body of knowledge from the various other project management associations and standards.

By using cutting-edge knowledge about how the human brain works to help create standards, PMI could move project management closer to a profession such as medicine. When the standards of the profession are based on empirical scientific knowledge, rather than good practices done on most projects most of the time, project management could become even more science than art.

What do you think? Can and should neuroscience be part of the future of project management?

Originally published on PMI's projectmanagement.com