Personnel Psychology in Project Management

“Are you in or out?” This is what Danny Ocean asks his 11 “experts” in the Hollywood blockbuster Ocean’s Eleven to motivate them to participate in his project; a planned coup to steal 150 million dollars from three Las Vegas casinos. His handpicked team consists of the best experts in their respective fields, including a munitions expert, a pickpocket, and an acrobat. Each expert is highly committed to the success of the project. They work hand in hand in a well-defined team, giving their best in an attempt to get the job done. This fictitious situation represents the ideal situation for every real-life project manager. Although most projects involve less than 150 million dollars, the recruitment and collaboration of the team members as well as the final success of the project can be a similarly thrilling experience. In an organizational context, a project team may, for instance, be built in order to develop an e-learning system that allows the external workers of a staffing agency to participate in distributed learning. Here, too, various experts are involved in the project: The team may include human resource managers, designers, and IT specialists. However, in contrast to Hollywood’s fiction, the recruiting process will not be driven by the “Are you in or out?” principle, and the expected “happy ending” will not be guaranteed as well.