Complex IT Project Management: 16 Steps to Success

13.15 Through the Looking Glass From the Other Side

Just as you are sizing up the customers and beneficiaries, they are evaluating you. When you get assigned to complex projects, chances are that you will get involved with dozens, if not hundreds, of people previously unknown to you. If you are diligent by nature, your good reputation should precede you. Or, if you are lucky, customers remain open-minded until you prove your value, or lack thereof, to them.

As a consultant, I have had the opportunity to experience this with greater frequency and dramatic effect than most, and am perhaps more sensitive than most to this interesting aspect of the project world. Let me start out by relating a story about my father's funeral. I went to see the minister who was to preside over the affair, at her request because she did not know my Dad, to provide input on his life. After listening to my hopeful words, she asked if he was a miscreant. Despite my grief, I had to laugh because he had been a research scientist right out of central casting, a brainy but withdrawn and self-effacing man. She explained the seemingly insulting question by recalling the first eulogy she delivered immediately after graduation from divinity school. In it, she portrayed the departed in terms that could have shamed the Second Coming. She noticed that the congregation was less than enthusiastic or comforted by her kind words about the man, whom she did not know. She subsequently made enough inquiries to learn that the deceased had left such a legacy of mistrust and resentment that most of the funeral attendees were probably there to validate his demise!

The point of this tale is this: as you circulate among customers and beneficiaries, quite naturally you will find yourself in the position of wanting to talk up the competency of you and your team. Before you go down that road, however, see how the beneficiaries react to your team, who may not be known to you that well either. Some may have long and possibly unhappy histories with one another. In most corporations, people are far too polite to mention this publicly, but it can definitely color project activities. If you find a beneficiary looking for more reassurance than appears appropriate, this is an avenue to explore with them - tactfully and in private, of course. If they have been burned, they are clearly not looking forward to round two with certain members of your team. The project management organization, or even the entire IT department, may be viewed as incompetent, if not bumbling and dangerous.

Think about how you may be perceived as well. For some reason, many project managers do not handle this people thing very well. Ask yourself how true this may be about you, and be honest. It is my observation that:

• "Type A," that is, driven individuals, make great project managers from a task completion perspective. Those of us possessing that genetic code must ask ourselves whether being a human ramrod necessarily equates to having the right touch with people. Many project managers appear to adopt the dictator style of leadership, but with customers and beneficiaries, the dynamics require the softer skills of education, empathy, negotiations, and inclusion.

• Project managers with extensive hands-on technical experience do not always have the best social skills, possibly because they do not have to make nice with routers or case tools, despite some odd stories I have heard in this regard.

• Some project managers enjoy lording over customers because they hold the power of the budget and calendar and thus the ability to skew things in favor of those beneficiaries they feel comfortable with. Those project managers who are impressed with this temporary power may be setting themselves up for the eventuality some people like to call "what goes around, comes around."

• Customers and beneficiaries may put up with a project manager's bluster or posturing, but only to the degree that they must. People in jail spend years brooding about revenge against the corrections officers for offenses, real or imagined, because they have nothing else to do. Customers and beneficiaries can be assumed to have equally active fantasy lives. Do not underestimate the likelihood that your insensitivity or grandstanding will be thrown back in your face. Be gracious, be professional, and never throw the first punch. As for your own need for retaliation, just remember that payback is a two-way street. We all love to win, but our job is to win the war, not any randomly annoying battle du jour.