To-may-to? To-mah-to?

You say to-may-to. I say to-mah-to. So what?

Well, different pronunciations are symptoms of different routes through life, each with its own history, values, practices . . . and language and interpretations. In the course of human events, few factors are more important than communication, and few are less well-understood.

For this very reason, thousands of failures are launched every day in the conference rooms of this country. Well-intentioned people try to function without common definitions. They are project managers, team members and other stakeholders trapped in a culture that dooms a majority of projects to failure, not infrequently total failure.

Overblown, you say? No, this is not simply a point of irritation for lingo freaks. It matters, a lot, to us all. Take, for example, the word “done.” Left to my own devices, I’ll make sure my part of the project is complete, finished according to my understanding of what should be included.

Yet, it may be lacking elements – perhaps important ones – required for subsequent project activities. The shortfalls may show up immediately, or it may be several steps down the road before they erupt. They can, and often do, cause severe schedule and cost problems as somebody else gets hit with an unexpected variance. Their assumptions didn’t match mine, and neither of us knew.

This problem is so pervasive that it is a fundamental piece of the general expectation that projects will never truly meet expectations regarding cost, schedule and quality. This assumption says something about attitudes toward communication, and therein lies a crucial issue for the project manager.

Stress, My Friend & Foe

If you’re a project manager, and you’re not tense, you’re not paying attention. Tension, stress, whatever you call it, is a defining worklife trait of effective project managers. You have to be a bit tight to do this job properly. But not too tight.

The shorthand of the workplace too often gets this wrong, equating tension/stress with unhappiness and poor health, period. That oversimplifies and trivializes this most valuable of conditions.

The pursuit of happiness is a stressful business, especially if you take it seriously. You’re chasing something you want but don’t have. The more valuable it is and the more you want it, the more stressful the process becomes. Pretty much by definition, the good project manager really, really wants the desired outcome.

It’s the level of determination, twinned up with the risk, uncertainty and dependencies, that make for the stress.

It’s no wonder, then, that project management draws the kind of people who enjoy challenge, problem solving and dealing with the unexpected under time pressure. And it’s no surprise that they live lives in which the tension can become suffocating.

Here’s why. Whether they admit it or not, project managers take pride in the role of go-to person, courageous decision maker, hard worker, totally dependable leader, manager and teammate.

People frequently find themselves in this work by natural selection rather than conscious choice, at least at the beginning. Early on, they seem to be more willing to take on the tough jobs. They take responsibility for learning how to do what no one else steps forward to tackle.

Over time, they build the reputation – in their own minds as well as among their superiors and peers – as people you can turn to. The workstyle traits that distinguish them become more pronounced as their distinctiveness becomes more sharply defined.

This good thing can become too much, and the invigorating stress, remaining too high for too long, becomes destructive. Wisdom must discipline commitment at some point, or such people can work themselves into burnout or worse.

The Project Manager's Art

How do you get people to do what you want them to do?

This eternal question of human relations has special resonance in the world of Project Management. Sometimes nobody wants to do what needs to be done -- perhaps even the Project Manager who is supposed to be its leader.

Considering the nature of Projects, this disability is understandable. But it's not acceptable. Dealing with it should be up front and on top of the Project Manager's priorities. It often isn't.

Consider the nature of Projects. They are temporary intrusions into the regular order of business. Sometimes they are massive. Always they require individuals to engage in unfamiliar tasks and/or to work with unfamiliar people. This uncomfortable new workload can be in addition to their accustomed activities, perhaps with no reduction in pre-existing expectations. You're supposed to kind of work this new thing in.

Surrounding it all is an aura of uncertainty, since Projects are -- by nature -- risky. No one, including the leadership, is quite sure how to handle this. That's why it's a project -- a complex, multidisciplinary effort to produce an innovation. The quality of the outcome is expected to be high. Oh, and you must use a minimum of resources, including funds and people, and meet a tough deadline.

There are many characterizations of what typically happens in such situations, some of them quite flip. Generally, the point being made is that there's no way this thing will get done anywhere near the deadline. Nor will it have a prayer of meeting budget. And quality? You're lucky if your result has 50 percent of the features or functions you set out to produce.

Well, what happens when things work, despite the odds? While successful Projects are in the minority, there are some. What makes the difference?

Project Management has been described as an art and a science. That's not just an airy remark. It is central to understanding how the Project Manager is to be effective.

All Productivity Is Personal

Effective Project Management can make perfect sense on paper. Logic, clarity and predictability are like that. Even risk can be identified and managed with reasonable certitude when you theoretically control the circumstances. Then you insert the human factor, and . . . .

Ah, the human factor. Sounds so manageable when you say it that way – sort of a verbal cardboard cutout with depersonalization of “human” and the emphasis on “factor.” As a matter of brutal fact, too many managers follow the Paul Simon dictum, “A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.”

Truth is, people even at their best are the least predictable of the resources available to the manager. Someone who is a star performer today can be a flat tire in the operation tomorrow, depending upon utterly unpredictable personal, family, health, financial, mood influences.

When that happens, there can be radical effects on results. The resources of cost (salary), time (work schedule), materials, equipment, facilities and everything else remain completely unchanged. The bad effect occurs solely because the human being has performed differently. That catalytic resource – the person – gives dynamic meaning to all those other resources, and is the dominant determinant of the outcome.

As in everything else, what is true in ordinary organized human activity is more so in Project Management, because a Project is organized human activity in a pressure cooker. You don’t have the luxury of seemingly plentiful time. Your resources are sparingly, perhaps grudgingly, often inadequately doled out from stores originally anticipated elsewhere.

Most importantly, your people are loaned from permanent organizational functions whose managers are not above tugging them back to serve contrary priorities.

In short, management of this human being thing makes or breaks the Project Manager. And the most serious challenge in doing so is bounded by the end of his/her nose.

The Ancient History of the Boss

Hundreds of tough-looking men stand around in a clearing in the North Woods, obviously waiting for something. Then a smallish guy walks into the clearing, goes up to the biggest, meanest-looking of the men and knocks him flat with a single punch.
The onlookers nod approvingly to one another, and a murmur goes through the crowd: “Must be the new boss.”

Would that establishing authority and leadership were so simple today! Well, it’s not. Many members of any Project Team can have sophisticated skills utterly different from those of the Project Manager. In fact, the very defining work of the Project can be common to Team members, but not the Project Manager. Such professionals can be difficult to lead – but Project success is impossible without accomplishing that.

It can be done. A veteran worker in a skilled trade, now in training to add Project Manager expertise, recalled his puzzlement a few years earlier when a Project Manager was added to an organization in which this senior contributor typically had a leading role.

He ignored the Project Manager for the next two or three Projects, then somehow was convinced to make use of the man’s knowledge and experience. His eyes were quickly opened, and that is why he decided to get Project Management training himself.

It is unfortunate that, in many organizations, such moments of revelation never occur. The Project Manager operates as digger-in-chief in a pick-and-shovel environment characterized more by devotion to good old-fashioned hard work than better up-to-date smart work.

While nothing is simple in love and war, life and Project Management, there is a relatively straightforward solution for the Project Manager.

Down from the Mighty White Horse

The starving settlers on the frontier deployed scouts in a desperate search for food. Back came the report: “The bad news is that all there is to eat out there is buffalo chips. The good news is, we have a five-year supply.”

Meanwhile, back in today’s world: No matter who blew it – or failed to do it – it’s all your fault. You’re the project manager. And you have to fix it. That's the bad news. Now let’s get on to the good news.

It’s true that the world is not yet at the point where little boys and girls aspire to be Project Managers. Cops, firemen, astronauts, sports stars, adventure heroes and all-purpose celebrities continue to dominate the career dream scene – for now.

But we’re getting there. More and more, employers are demonstrating at least a general understanding that Project Management training is worth demanding in new hires. Many specify in job postings that applicants hold the certification as Project Management Professional (PMP).

In response, more working adults are seeking Project Management training and certification, and more students are taking courses in the subject. Project Management no longer is as mythological as the tales of the Lone Ranger.

All this good news shouldn’t mask the fact that Project Management is difficult work.

For one thing, it is frequently mischaracterized as an information technology specialty, so business-process challenges are assigned to IT specialists who have no idea how to manage any of it outside its technical component. More broadly, functional managers sometimes see the new Project Manager as the convenient repository for any problem they don’t want to deal with.

And, sadly, the whole thing is the Project Manager’s fault.

One Sick Project

A junior manager of a healthcare organization came across a no-brainer solution to a serious problem, and therein lies a depressing story. This is an illustration of the failure of goal coordination that fosters extensive effort -- extensive, fruitless effort.

In the healthcare facility, there traditionally has been a high rate of back and neck injury among staff members who have to lift and turn bedridden patients. Most of the patients are incapable of helping in the effort, and some are quite hefty. The patient also can suffer injury because of the clumsiness inevitable when two or more people are moving an inert body.

The junior manager attended a conference at which she learned about equipment that will do the heavy lifting while the attendants carry out simple, easy tasks and guide the process.

She put together a project proposal for installing the equipment in various patient care units of the facility, emphasizing the benefits to the workers’ health and the organization’s management of its costs. There also, not incidentally, would be the contribution to the comfort and welfare of the patients.

The decision to propose a change instantly transformed the junior manager into a project manager, which she didn’t realize. While she was somewhat familiar with project management, this was the first time a sizeable project had arisen in her worklife. Unfortunately, the project warning bell didn’t sound in the back of her mind.

In due course, senior management approved the plan, which was to begin with a pilot implementation in one department that had volunteered to go first. The equipment was installed, information was provided to senior professionals in the department, explanatory signs were made and posted.

It’s all been downhill since.