Question
during a Project Management workshop:
“Will this course make me less
risk-averse?”
Answer: “It could. The workshop doesn’t make risk go
away – It gives you tools to manage it.”
Well,
the workshop didn’t work.
Same person, two
days later:
“Thank you very much for this course. Now
I know I never want to get anywhere near Project Management.”
That risk-averse person was unusual
only in his candor. Most of us avoid risk, and even walk around or away from
the possibility of facing it. Why endure pain if you can escape it?
The very mention
of risk often is enough to kill an idea or initiative:
“That’s pretty
risky, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. I guess
so. Let’s just forget it.”
No, don’t forget
it. Evaluate it. What is the likely payoff if it works? How does that match up vs.
the potential damage if it doesn’t? And what’s the opportunity cost of not trying?
It’s that
prospect of pain or failure that stops so many good things from even being
attempted. We should never let such an unexamined emotional state direct our
decisions.
Risk management is a sensible, doable
system for engaging and overcoming risk – but you have to be minimally daring, enough
to believe you can make it work.
Experience proves
that most anticipated problems diminish or evaporate if we actually confront
them. Mark Twain probably never said this, but it’s a fine quote anyway: “I have
been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.”
The project
manager employs risk management, engaging the situation with an attitude of
careful inquiry, not tense combat.
What are the
facts in the existing circumstance? What are the specifics of the outcome I
plan to achieve? What in the current state is positive for my intention, and
what is negative? What are the threats to my purpose, and potential threats?
Those are the
most basic matters affecting the launch of a project. Their character generally
is poorly known, sometimes to the point that they are mere shadows in a fuzzy
landscape. If they aren’t thoroughly examined, they stay shadowy, fuzzy . . .
and threatening.
Risk aversion is
the equivalent of being scared of the dark. If you can’t get yourself to get up
and walk to the bathroom, or at least turn on the light, you are risk averse.
If, instead, you operate a workmanlike method of objective,
progressive examination, you’re practicing the first stage of project
management. Then you link it with a thoroughly controlled trial-and-error
process.
If the thing is
hopeless, or if it threatens to blow up in your face, you will find that out
early on, without being harmed.
It is well
established that the simple act of focusing on a logical process dissipates the
negative emotion that drives risk aversion.
Risk, most simply described, is the
possibility that your initiative will fail. If you’re risk averse, your early
planning behavior almost guarantees trouble.
A common cause of
project failure is sloppy conduct of the first activities – when the
examination of the situation is incomplete, hurriedly done or skipped entirely.
None of those errors is very rare in project situations of my experience. These
are self-inflicted risk events.
The plan too
often is built on glib assumptions, fond wishes or strong opinions. The
politics of organizations may push the project manager to accept convictions
from above rather then develop sound expectations from the ground up.
So the first big risk for any project
can be generated by the sponsoring organization.
This is a
political issue, and it challenges the diplomatic skills of the project manager
right up front. Your first job is to talk the boss into reining in the rush and
doing a proper startup . . . because if you
go along you wind up as the designated fall guy for the mess that ensues.
A related risk,
one even more pervasive and damaging, is the failure of the key stakeholders to
fully and honestly share their intentions, negotiate firm commitments – and
keep them.
At the executive
level of the sponsoring organization, there often are differing priorities, and
even enmities, that the project manager discovers only when some chasm opens
up.
Some senior
managers whose active support is desperately needed may decide one day to redirect
their resources to some new imperative.
And there just is
the general problem of identifying, obtaining and keeping the human, financial,
material and technical resources required to adequately staff and supply the
effort. That’s a big risk.
The longer the
project goes, the more serious the danger becomes.
For all those reasons, plus innumerable
others, the wise project manager devotes serious attention to what is said and
demonstrated, what is proposed, questioned and unclear, at the very beginning
(prebeginning?) of the project.
This project
manager asserts a role perhaps above his/her role status, conducting open and meaningful
conversations to surface and safely settle those potential hot spots.
The task-oriented
leader who plunges prematurely, sleeves well rolled, into the nuts and bolts is
asking for it.
You do the
politics. However impatient you might be to get at it, you have to keep the
leash on while you negotiate a strong set of agreements and build a stable
communication network.
All the risks to
be managed within the project work packages are secondary to those up front. Too
many project managers paper over the initial challenges in the interest of the
more easily attained satisfactions of project work itself.
If you’re averse
to self-inflicted project failure, look to the project launch for your cure.
Question: When
projects of your experience worked well, how strong a base was set before
project activities began?
SEE ALSO:
Projects: What Do You Mean, Success?
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