7 Uncomfortable Truths that Project Managers Need to Understand

Project Managers are positive people. With our toolkit of methods and processes, our boundless optimism, and our can-do attitude, it sometimes feels like we can do anything. Yet the fact is, there are limitations. We must all face some uncomfortable truths.

So, in this article, I’d like to own up to some of the uncomfortable truths that have bothered me.

This is a personal perspective, so it may reflect my own insecurities, rather than yours. But I suspect many of them will resonate with you, as they do with audiences to whom I speak, across the United Kingdom and beyond.

What we will cover

The seven uncomfortable truths I will discuss are:

1. Your Stakeholders will Decide whether Your Project is Successful… or not
2. You’ll Get the Project Team You Deserve
3. You Can’t Control Everything
4. You can Please All of Your Stakeholders Some of the Time, and
   Some of Your Stakeholders All of the Time;
   but you Can’t Please All of Your Stakeholders All of the Time
5. An Absentee Project Manager is a Contradiction in Terms
6. Shift Happens!
7. The Level of Attention to Detail can often Make the Difference between Success and Failure

So, let’s get started. And, if you need to talk, please do get in touch with me: the doctor will be listening!

Your Stakeholders will Decide whether Your Project is Successful… or not

I think this is the big one for me. No matter how well you manage your project, ultimately success is not down to you. It will be your stakeholders who decide whether to:

• adopt the processes you build
• use the systems you create
• buy the products you launch
• employ the assets you deliver
• subscribe to the services you develop

This has led me to a simple conclusion. Of all the project management processes and disciplines, stakeholder engagement is paramount.

Famously, Tim Lister said that:

‘Risk management is how adults manage projects’

But where do risks come from? Many of them are down to human factors among…

So, in response to Tim Lister, I’d add that:

‘Stakeholder engagement is how sophisticated adults manage projects’

The only way to regain control of your outcomes from your stakeholders is to invest your time in them. Listen to their advice. Assess their priorities. Understand their perspectives and needs, and work to meet them.

It’s all about communication

For this reason, I suspect project management is all about communication. This, in itself, was an uncomfortable truth for me. Up to a point, I had always assumed that two things were enough to make me a good project manager:

1. I was a cool, calm, rational, and logical thinker. I could see the big picture and also drill into the details.
2. I was an assertive and achievement-focused professional. I knew the value of hard work and perseverance.

I thought that these two together were enough to succeed as a project manager. And, they are… for some projects. But as the stakes for individuals grow, and the political dimension gets more important, they no longer suffice.

In fact, I would now argue that too much focus on logic and achievement can be a blocker to real success. What you need is willingness and dexterity in communicating with a wide range of stakeholders. Your job is not to be political in your approach. But, you absolutely must engage with the game of politics.

You’ll Get the Project Team You Deserve

Stakeholder engagement is all about communication. But my discomfort grew when I realized that so is project delivery. Because the uncomfortable truth here is that you get the team that you deserve.

This isn’t to say that, if you’re a good person, the universe will reward you with a good team. And if you are a bad person, then the universe will punish you. If only that were true!

Here’s what this means. The investment you put into developing and nurturing your team will dictate the quality of teamwork and individual commitment you will get out. The more you invest, the more you will get – and that will be what you deserve. But, if you fail to invest your time and commitment into your team… Then you will also get what you deserve!

Communication again

So, how do you invest in your team? You guessed it… it’s communication. I came to the conclusion, somewhat reluctantly, that:

‘Project management is 80 percent communication’

Communication is how we work with the team as individuals and as a group. It’s how we develop and share plans. And it’s how everyone can align around a shared commitment to a goal we all understand.

You Can’t Control Everything

Something I have noticed in myself, and in almost every project manager I have known, is this:

‘What project managers crave, above all else, is control’

We are not control freaks. But our job is simple. It’s to bring control to uncertain, complex, shifting, and sometimes confusing environments. And we have designed many of our methods and tools to help us do just that.

Traditional vs Agile

In traditional, predictive project management, we have designed processes and tools to:

• anticipate what will happen and
• plan our work to accommodate risks and contingencies.

But in the even less-certain new world of large-scale software development, that was looking increasingly difficult. So agile methods were born, to place new frameworks around lower-certainty endeavors.

In domains that demand the certainty of planning and estimating, yet also need complex software that poorly lends itself to that approach, project managers have designed hybrid approaches that take the most relevant aspects of each approach.

The Universe is not on your side

The uncomfortable truth here, though, is that the universe won’t take sides. And it certainly won’t respect your plan. For many project managers, a favorite quote comes from a Prussian General. Helmuth von Moltke said:

‘No plan survives first contact with the enemy’

But, as the eternal optimist, I find myself more drawn to a quote from US General, Dwight D Eisenhower:

‘Plans are nothing; planning is everything’

What I take from this is that we cannot control the outcomes. But we can control our preparation and readiness for the unexpected. The reason for planning is to think through what can happen and be able to recognize the importance of the events that unfold.

You can Please All of Your Stakeholders Some of the Time, and Some of Your Stakeholders All of the Time; but You Can’t Please All of Your Stakeholders All of the Time

I’ve paraphrased the classic quote that’s often attributed to Abraham Lincoln or PT Barnum. It reflects my experience. In any complex project, you’ll have many stakeholders. And what each one wants and needs will differ from their colleagues. You’ll have different agendas, power bases, and styles to deal with.

This is why I always think that scoping is the hardest part of project management. This is where you need to reconcile all the different points of view.

But, the uncomfortable truth is that you can rarely do so completely. No matter how hard you work, and how ingeniously you negotiate, there will often be some stakeholders whom you leave at least partially unsatisfied.

The challenge of scoping is to understand which stakeholder must feel content with the outcome, and which scope elements are objectively critical to the project as a whole. A good project manager must therefore be able to read the dynamics of the room and also understand the fundamentals of the project.

Projects are political

This takes us back to the point I made with my first uncomfortable truth. Project managers cannot avoid politics. Scoping is only partly about negotiating the ‘best’ mix of functionality, specification, and quality. It is largely about finding the right political compromise. This is one that respects the relative power of competing stakeholders as well as the relative value of competing functionality.

An Absentee Project Manager is a Contradiction in Terms

There was a time when I went from being seen as a competent project manager to being regarded as a good one.

‘What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence.
The question is what can you make people believe you have done.’

Arthur Conan Doyle, ‘A Study in Scarlet’

At that point, my firm would sometimes ask me to visit other projects. I went partly to evaluate the project and the risk to the firm, and partly to give advice and support to less-experienced project managers. For some reason, those were the days when things went wrong, back at my own project.

The Monitor and Control Cycle

The more frequently you monitor what’s happening on your project, the sooner you pick up problems. The sooner you pick them up, the smaller they are. Consequently, they are easier to resolve. And, because you are monitoring often, you can check on the effect of intervention and tweak it quickly, if you need to.

But, if you fail to monitor often enough, the first you’ll sometimes learn of a problem is when it’s already a big one. So, you’ll need a sizeable intervention to fix it. But then, if it’s a while before you can check up on it, any residual issues can quickly blow up, out of control.

A project manager needs to be present, to monitor and control your project. If you are not, you aren’t managing your project. Therefore, if you must be absent, delegate the management of your project to a colleague whom you trust to make a call that you will be able to support.

Shift Happens!

I’ve already implied the universe has no particular love for your project. Indeed, the reality is worse than that. Your project exists within a wider context of:

• shifting politics,
• evolving technology,
• unstable economics,
• commercial disruption,
• legislative and regulatory churn, and
• threats to security

Is it any wonder that your plan is out of date on day 2?

It’s what I came here for…

As someone who likes predictability, that’s an uncomfortable truth. However, I found that I am also someone who relishes the challenge of constant problem-solving. There’s a sense of achievement when you do something. And there’s even more when you do something against the odds.

The reality for me is that sometimes, a little bit of scary lastminutesmanship is exciting.  And that’s what I think a lot of us love about projects. So, abandon any expectation that your project will go to plan, and embrace the challenge of dealing with the unexpected.

The Level of Attention to Detail can often Make the Difference between Success and Failure

Project managers are mostly can-do people. For us, JDI is one adjective short of our favorite mantra*. So, when it comes down to the last stage of a project, or sorting through the final details…

We’d rather be off, starting something new and more exciting. Thank you. Goodbye.

So, the uncomfortable truth here is that we can’t. Or, more accurately, we mustn’t. And it hurts. Because your team will want to be off. Indeed, part of your role will be to manage their exits from your project, and into new placements. You will be no less impatient than them.

But the devil is in the details, to coin a cliché. If you abandon your project before it is finished, or ignore the details because they bore you, there’s a price to pay. And it will be a big one. You’ll have put in 80 percent of the effort. But your project could be only 20 percent of the success it should have been.

Attention to detail is crucial. Without it, you could turn a successful project into a sad failure. Truths doesn’t get more uncomfortable than that.

* JDI stands for Nike’s commercial tagline, Just Do It. Many of the project managers I know prefer JFDI as a slogan!

What Uncomfortable Truths would You Like to Share?

I’d love to read your own uncomfortable truths, so please share them in the comments, below. I will, of course, respond to them all.