Politics Projects . . . & Vice Versa

     Hey, project manager!

     There is a lot of attention in these weeks of October to the battles for election to public office in the USA, in its national entities and its constituent states. Much political persuasion is presented to us in various channels of information and entertainment.

     And also misinformation, disinformation, distortion and just straight-out lies.

     Those are all work packages.

     The good, the valuable and important, the interesting, the useful . . . and the damaging and disgusting. They are organized into projects with much the same characteristics as those you’re leading.

'Teamwork' Loses Yet Another One

     Heard a radio interview the other morning with a former member of the federal Secret Service, the agency with the sunglass/earpiece guys you see glaring around suspiciously whenever the president is out there among us regular people.

     Well, turns out these agents are the ones who forgot to lock the front door of the White House, or even be there to greet the knife-carrying intruder who jumped the fence, crossed the front lawn, opened the door and ran around inside for a while before some off-duty agent put the nab on him.

     These agents also are the ones in the news with the hotel hallway pass-outs and loud/public arguments with women demanding payment for services rendered overnight.

     How times have changed. There used to be a different image imprinted on the public perception. We saw these grim, expressionless guys as superheroes, right there to fend off potential attackers of the President of the United States and other precious assets. We trusted them.

Agile: The End of that Oldtime Project Management? Again? Nope. Again.

     Remember TQM?

     I do. Total Quality Management rose 20 years ago and fell a short time later. It was considered by some in the project management field, at the beginning, as the state-of-the-art successor to our ancient craft.

     TQM was the new wonder. Project Management, as we knew it, was out.

     I didn’t see it that way. I pegged TQM as embroidery on the working jeans of project management – a nice enhancement, but you still had to have the jeans.

     TQM was a perfectly respectable system, initially devised to improve management of quality in manufacturing processes. W. Edwards Deming developed the modern form in Japan after World War II, where he went as a representative of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The program helped Japan recover from the devastation of the war.

Managing Bad News

     I had botched it – badly. Unmistakably.

     An assignment had gone well, and it was obvious that organization could use further help.

     In an excess of enthusiasm, I immediately drew up and dispatched a proposal seeking the additional work. So far so good. Professional follow-up selling, right?

    Then came the dawn.

    This wasn’t my client.  It was my client’s client, and it was a big, important one for her. Not only had I overstepped a sacred boundary, but it was in a particularly delicate matter.

     The client’s decision-maker was a prickly and headstrong person, and my patroness had carefully cultivated the relationship. If he wasn’t offended by this aggressive sales pitch of mine, she certainly would be. My client had trusted in my professionalism, and I had blown it.

Argument Builds Relationships

     This guy startled me.

     We had disagreed, and then I described in greater detail what I meant. He listened. Then he said, “You’re right. Now I see your point, and I agree.” I was really nonplussed. That had never happened to me before.

     I came from a large, very verbal family, and one thing we never did was give in on an argument. If the words didn’t work, even in waves of escalated volume and intensity, we tended to get physical. Growing into the larger world, and learning to keep it strictly verbal, I discovered that most people are not accustomed to debate as sport, or even as instructive.

People, Process, Resistance, Management

     The manager said to me, wistfully, "If it weren't for the people, this job would be perfect." He was responsible for the work of nine people.

     The problem was, of course, that the people WERE the job. The process he was conducting did not exist without the nine people. The manager was superb as an individual user of the system, but not as a leader of the people.

     This made for a tough place to work. A perfectionist in charge of people whose presence, in his mind, messed up his beloved process.

Big Project: My Career

     The nurse was showing the newborn to the daddy. “It’s a manager!” she was saying, much as we would announce, “It’s a boy!” or “It’s a girl!”

     It was a cartoon I saw a long time ago, but the effect lingers in the mind. We operate too often on the apparent assumption that our work performance and professional position are not really up to us.

    Whatever came with us at birth, or has been given to us since by the wisdom and goodwill of others, is what we have for a job, seems like. We credit happenstance or lucky chance more than our own conscious effort.

     I’ve known a few people who didn’t buy that concept. All of them have been admirable . . . and successful.