Doing the Right Thing: In teaching my UW-Platteville course for their master's degree in project management program this summer, I've had the opportunity to review the project journals of over 20 students, all telling stories about live or recently-completed projects on which they were either the PM or a team member.
My observation from this work is almost certainly not original, but is still striking to me anyway: In project management, general business, and indeed, life, I think nearly everyone can quickly determine the Right Thing to do in a specific situation. Where we usually get hung up is with all the personal, psychological, organizational and environmental obstacles to actually doing it.
As we all know, so much of project management is communications. A colleague of mine often refers to The Conversations - those often-difficult conversations that one must have with sponsors, stakeholders, team members, vendors, etc. in order to do the Right Thing within the context of a project. Actually having those Conversations is far harder than one might think for many project managers. Concerns about job security, being liked, respected, reporting structure, and other factors influence whether and how the conversation occurs.
So, perhaps more project management training needs to focus on how to actually do the Right Thing - how to have the conversations, how to do an honest self-assessment prior to going into a potentially difficult situation, how to debrief one's self after a difficult situation, and how to get better at handling these. As PMs improve their tactical ability to actually do the Right Thing, we'll see more projects get completed within traditional and non-traditional definitions of success.
I am looking at a busy August - December outside of my day job: I am doing a couple of days of consulting for a firm in mid-August, presenting at a conference in September, teaching for UW-Madison in October, UW-Milwaukee in November, and teaching a semester-long course for UW-Platteville this fall semester. I am also scheduled to present at a couple of PMI SeminarsWorld in 2009, and have papers submitted for the Asia-Pacific Global Conference in Kualu Lumpur in February. Stay tuned...
