Shakespeare says… what is a name? But in my experience, choosing a name for a project is very important for the success of a project. Maybe for us the project name is not important, but for the community around the project is important.
We must be very careful to choose a name for our project, especially if we want to choose the village or the region name for our project. For the community, the project name will determine who is the owner and it will be reflected for the priority for the recruitment and the local supplier for the project. The problem is getting bigger if in the area near project there are not many man power that suitable for the project.
In my experience, managing a project that operate in two regions that have a very different industry that grow in it. The first region is for the mining area and the second region is for the port area and we will have hauling accross this two region. The region for the mining area is region that grow with plantation industry, and for the port area is region that grow with mining industry. If we see from this condition, the manpower that potential to recruit is from the port area region. In this case if we choose the name from the mining area or from the port area I believe that there would be problem in the recruitment process.
I have discussed with the informal leader and the formal leader in those region and I can sense that each area has its own pride if I can say that. Each area has their own way how to handle the recruitment and they have different expectation from the project. We must appreciate and manage this well, and the wrong name could be a problem for the project.
Beside the choosing name issue, what we must do are communicate and build commitment about how to recruit the employees from outside both region, how to recruit in each region and how to recruit between those area. The communication and the agreement should be done with the informal leader and formal leader in each region. This process should be started before the project started to avoid the conflict in the recruitment process.
To avoid such problem from the project name, I strongly suggest that we must be wise to choose the name for our project, if it possible we must choose a name from the cultural history or cultural symbol that can be accepted for all the area project operate.
