Cogent Language Video
"Growing Project Know-how" Series
Growing Project Know-how for Free
"How can I grow my own project know-how from my lived experience? For any future project, along with the hands-on know-how, I would like to have explicit, shareable models of it, organized by team purpose, and a clear strategy for advancing my career via that project.Â
Ok then! Here's an approach for you. It's easy, technically. You can use AI with it or not. And, it is free.
 Experiential learning is a way to grow your own project know-how, from your work now, with your teams, for your whole career. It is based on your unique history. It is time-tested and documented. It can grow know how from head, through hands, and heart. It can help you contribute to and/or lead your current teams. It can leverage AI, but doesn’t depend on it. It can support your career long term, even with the evolution of new project constructs and perspectives, of AI and technology, and of global politics, economics, and industries. And It doesn’t have to cost any money.
3rd Party Video
For early career professionals, Cogent Language curates videos related to project know-how in our video blog, Project Constructs. Posts on the blog link mostly to short, third party videos that we’ve selected for their quality.
Posts and videos are organized into playlists. These are accessible in two ways from the rubrics at the top of the blog: by 8 project team purposes and by 6 great perspectives on project know-how. To access a playlist from here, click on any of the links below.
Project Constructs
 In these playlists, each post sets out a video on one project construct. When the word “construct” is used as a noun, as here, its first syllable is accented, and it means an idea or concept that is created for some purpose by some person(s). So, a construct is an idea that has been constructed by some person(s), typically so that some person(s) can do or construct something better or more easily.  Â
Consistent with this, Cogent Language uses the phrase “project construct” (or just “construct”) to mean any process, technique, method, artifact, model, or ceremony that project teams use to actually build things. Example “constructs” are “product backlog”, “work breakdown structure”, and “daily scrum”. More constructs appear in the blue tag cloud on the home page of the blog, pictured here.Â
Since project constructs as we define them are actionable, the actions – and the inputs, outputs, and benefits that they involve – can be seen/ So, they are very usefully demonstrated by the medium of video. Thus, we call our video log on project methods, processes, and so forth, “Project Constructs”.
 While a construct is a mental model, here, it is a model that is actionable by a group, as is a map, a recipe, or a blueprint. In this way, it differs from, say, a “value”, “principle”, “theory”, or “worldview”. These have more abstract meanings and are much less actionable by a group. Note that our “construct” also differs from a “tool”, “machine”, “technology” or (technical) "system”. These are terms for concrete objects or categories of objects, rather than recipe-like mental models actionable by a group.
