One project. Two managers.

CIO magazine runs an article that describes Mellon Financial's new approach to project management -- a two-member project management team. The company pairs an IT project manager with a line-of-business manager. Mellon calls this pairing the project architect program.

According to Gopal Kapur, president of the Center for Project Management in San Ramon, California, "Today's complex projects require a combination of business and technology savvy that's very difficult to find."

The article tells us that Mellon is having success with this approach, however, I believe this approach is a weak-kneed cousin to Toyota's chief engineer.

In a prior post we explored Toyota's chief engineer role -- an engineer with business and technology savvy. The chief engineer is created through Toyota's apprentice approach to training. And that's the problem with most corporate training programs -- it's the wrong kind of training.

In the Harvard Business Review article "Deep Smarts," Dorthy Leonard and Walter Swap write that we must pursue new methods to train employees. Why? Because the fast-changing, 3D world we live in laughs at our linear thinking and training techniques.

Instead, they suggest corporations should use an apprentice approach along with other nonlinear training methods -- such as story -- to develop a deep understanding of a given role.

Because deep smarts are experienced based and often context specific, they can't be produced overnight or readily imported into an organization. It takes years for an individual to develop them. They can be taught, however, with the right techniques. Drawing on their forthcoming book Deep Smarts, Dorothy Leonard and Walter Swap say the best way to transfer such expertise to novices--and, on a larger scale, to make individual knowledge institutional--isn't through PowerPoint slides, a Web site of best practices, online training, project reports, or lectures. Rather, the sage needs to teach the neophyte individually how to draw wisdom from experience. Companies have to be willing to dedicate time and effort to such extensive training, but the investment more than pays for itself.

What the CIO article fails to explain is that there are actually three people involved in the project architect program. They didn't tell you that you also need a software architect. That the architect has much to do with the success of an IT project, because he frames the problem and lays the foundation of success. Of course, if you follow Toyota's case study, one person can run circles around three.

Executive recruiters have a term for this kind of employee -- Leveraged hire: one person, three times the work, twice the pay.