Blocking and Tackling

There are three things that every project manager should always have readily at hand.

• A 30 second Elevator Pitch
• A Summary Gantt Chart
• A Current Issues List

The 30 Second Elevator Pitch will provide a high level executive summary of what the project is and why it is important to the organization. When you live and breathe the project day in and day out, those things are intuitively obvious. But as you move up the organizational structure of the company, the number of projects and other initiatives grows exponentially. It is not uncommon for a vice president to have several hundred different things executing under their span of control not to mention additional things happening outside that span. So the idea is that a project manager should always be prepared to set the context of what their project is and what value it will deliver to the organization. And you should be able to do that in the span of an elevator ride. Try it. Practice it out loud some time. Every one of us knows it. But it can be harder than you think to actually get coherent words out of your mouth.

The Gantt chart will help explain how the project is progressing and where it is going. It should show the major phases of the project, high level activities, and all major milestones. It should not get down to the individual task level. If you get too detailed you will lose whatever audience you have in the weeds. This needs to be a one page chart with a visual timeline, not just a spreadsheet of tasks and dates. I truly appreciate how finance people can look at an enormous spreadsheet and see the implication of the data inherently. I, like many others, cannot and need a chart to visualize the information to make it digestible. I also like to include a one line budget summary. While not technically part of a Gantt chart, I have found it useful.

The Current issues List will provide a summary of obstacles, and who is working them. You never know where you will run into an intersection between other people, meetings, and activities and a potential resolution or cross-over of common issues. The ability to quickly summarize all of the issues that you have and who is working them has been very useful. In my experience, it has even prevented a team member from being reassigned to another project because she was working on a vital issue to a major project. Just that simple list is great. If you want to go the extra mile and have every issue rated for impact and severity, so much the better. But I often find project managers lacking the simple list. Issues are identified in meeting minutes, but they are not routinely tracked systematically. It is helpful to manage expectations of delivery as well. You might get help in a surprising place by having this quickly at hand.

Ready access to these three simple tools, can make the difference in people’s opinion of you as a project manager. Are you a seat of the pants fly jockey? Or are you organized and in control? Perceptions are reality whether they are true or not. These are a few very simple ways of influencing that perception in a positive manner. But it is up to you to actually do it.

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What Does a Project Manager Bring to the Table?

In the course of more than 25 years in this business, I have heard various expressions of this question asked. I have given various answers over the years, but they really boil down to these:

A) Get things organized and done.
B) Ensure a free flow of communication within and around the project.
C) Play well with others.

Those are listed in REVERSE order of importance.

The primary skill of a Project Manager is to engender trust among stakeholders. If one fails at this, then the remaining items are a moot point. It all goes back to the saying that “I learned all the important things I need for business when I was in kindergarten.”

I am reminded of a contract project manager in the telecom industry in the late 90’s. It was a HOT time for telecom to understate the point. I was in a training class with him about teamwork and communication skills. He thought all of that was “hogwash”! (He was in that class because he had been sent. (Hint!!)) He had become very successful going from place to place and recovering stalled or failed projects. He believed that the role of a project manager was to “spank the donkeys and get them up the hill whether they want to go up or not.” I asked if he had ever gone back to do a second project with any of his teams? As expected, his answer was “No.”

Therein lies the heart of the matter.

The vast majority of us are in corporate environments where we must work with project team members over and over again for years. We absolutely cannot be successful if we leave a trail of bodies in our wake. We may get one project completed on time or on budget. But this approach will fail in the long run as team members refuse to take on another project with you.

I have always said that I can teach the mechanics of breaking down a project, organizing it, and executing it effectively. That is the 20% of project management that is science. To a large extent, I can coach to improve a project manager’s communication skills over time. But there are certain aspects of successful project managers that I believe MUST be inherent; they cannot be taught. I cannot coach someone to be curious; to ask the follow-up question “What does it mean when you say…?” Neither can I train someone to respect those around them, to value the contributions that every team member brings to the table, or to just be respectful to those around you.

“The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.”
— Theodore Roosevelt

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