Good PM 10 – Keep Focus

Posted: September 15th, 2009 | Tags: Autism spectrum, Project Management Institute, Project Manager skills, Winston Churchill | No Comments »

: Image via Wikipedia

“The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.” – Stephen Covey

and

“If you’re going through hell, keep going.” – Winston Churchill

The last in my series will focus on the item that brings it all together. Being able to do all the other nine and still be able to focus. How to keep your eye on the ball. This is where some of the bad aspects of Autistic Spectrum disorders could be a benefit.

It is well known that the “rain makers” have the ability to focus like none of us can. People on the autism spectrum normally has a topic that they focus on and go into way too deep! The drawback of this is that they normally end up sacrificing other skills in order to do this. In most cases it is their outward focus that they loose. Ability to read emotions, communicate with people etc..

When the project is really in a tough spot, the only way to get out is normally to cut out the noise, get to the root cause and then focus on the remedy for this root cause. To many inexperienced project managers get distracted by the noise and/or emotions. They try to please everybody and in a lot of cases “over communicate”. It sometimes takes a project manager a couple of tries to develop this skill. Most “seasoned” project managers have developed this skills without even noticing it.Just like we are taught concentration skills at a young age, so project managers can be taught focus. Small steps.

However, to much focus is not long term sustainable. You have to come up for breath every now and again. Touching base with all your stakeholders and re-checking that we are all still aligned. If you focus for too long you could miss key signs that the world around you has started to change.

Save as PDF

Good PM 9 – How do deal with people on your project

Posted: September 14th, 2009 | Tags: people skills, Project Management, Project Management Institute, Project manager, Project Manager skills | No Comments »

: Image via Wikipedia

The ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee and I will pay more for that ability than for any other under the sun. - John D. Rockefeller

Here we get to the point that really seperate “any old” project manager from the “Good PM”. How well can you deal with people. People is the most dynamic part of any project. PMI defines a project as an “unique endevear”. Every project that has people involved will by definition be unique if we do not have exactly the same team as on the previous project.

A lot of the previous “good pm” attributes, like conflict management, have people at the core. In order for your project to be successful in any way, you will need to be able to make the best of the people you have on-board. Being able to relate to people, being able to identify different personality types and how to deal with each of these is crucial if you want to succeed in project management. Like the previous post, this skill is also something that can be taught in training classes but only be perfected by real life experience.

Recently I have witnessed another case of a brilliant mind that did not have the ability to build rapport with key stakeholders. Although all the decisions made on the project were technically correct, the inability of the project manager to appropriately deal with the conflict between stakeholders turned the project into a “burning” project where the fire fighters had to come and help. The key cause in this case was the project managers inability to “read” the stakeholders, understand their emotions and deal with it in an unbiased way.

I have also seen the opposite case, where the project manager is such a people person that now work gets done. Keeping everybody happy was so important that no tough decisions where ever made and all difficult decision got put on hold.

It is normally fairly easy to spot the project managers with bad people skills. Not to say that bad people skills always equal bad project manager. There are roles for these people as well. Sometimes the lack of “soft” skills is what is needed from a escalation manager, where being able to take charge, evaluate a situation and make decisions are the critical skills.

Horses for courses! Just be sure you know the limitations of the project managers that you work with.

Save as PDF