The dual personality

Let me start this post by posing a question. Are you the same person you are at work as you are at home? Or do you adopt a work persona - an outer shell which allows you to be the person you need to be at work. Or do you believe that you should be all of who you are no matter what? Do you feel that having a work persona is tantamount to lying?

In recent years (even weeks!) I would have said adopting a work persona is tantamount to lying. I would have said if you can't be yourself and let people go hang if they don't like what they see, then the job isn't for you. But lately I have been challenging this view of the world.

Project Managers are chameleons. We have to adapt to suit our situation. We have to be mentor, counsellor, friend and protector (to name but a few) as the situations throughout the project change. We have to adapt our approach depending on the people we're dealing with and what we need out of them. If that sounds manipulative, well, it is.

And we cannot do all this without changing that outer shell. I have also long been a proponent of a more relaxed style of Project Management. I still am. However, with that relaxed approach, comes a need for toughness. A steel which can make you put your foot down and refuse to budge when you know you're right. And not accepting all aspects of what is needed for a Project Manager is basically not accepting all aspects of yourself. Which is not beneficial to anyone. But how do you balance this?

If you are a natural leader then this comes easily. You have a flair for when to be tough and when to let things go. When to be like a dog with a bone and when to roll with the punches. But for those of us who do not find this coming naturally need something else. And this is where the work persona comes in. It does not have to be hard and fast. I like to think of it as an invisibility cloak - I am always there but people see what they need to see. My other trick is to fake it till you make it. I have a number of leaders I revere (for their technical ability, leadership style, or charisma) and I pretend to be them in a given situation. And before long you find yourself acting the way you need to act without thinking. You won't always get it right. But you keep trying and you'll get there. 'Good judgement comes from experience - unfortunately experience comes from bad judgement.'

Control....or why it's better to manage without it

It has been a while since I posted anything - for the readers I've got, I apologise! Lately I have been musing over the percieved holy grail of project management - control.

I say it as a percieved holy grail, as we love our lists. We have lists documenting the lists which we have so we know which lists contain which list items. Lists give us the illusion of control. Yet the simple truth is that in todays business industry, people demand project managers who can work in a matrix environment. Basically, you need to run the project without having direct managerial responsibility for anyone. This can be terrifying to some project managers as they don't know how to enforce control without having the tools this provides them.

But what if this strive for control is what is causing the problem in the first place? A project is late, we say the PM let the timescales out of control. A project is over budget, they didn't control the finances well enough. A huge issue comes out of nowhere (think swine flu where whole floors of people were sent home) and the PM didn't think through all the angles and identify the risks correctly. Phew - what a responsibility! We have to be a timelord, chancellor of the exchequer and psychic! I don't think so! What if we just stopped trying to control everything. What if we accepted that we'd commit to do our best but that sometimes things happen which we can't control. What if we just let go.

And you know what? Deliverables come in early. People don't feel as pressured so they work harder and produce more. By treating people as the adults they are, they live up to and exceed your expectations. The workload as a PM becomes lighter and we can spend more time building relationships with senior stakeholders to ensure we have the networks in place in case the brown smelly stuff does hit the fan we have contacts who can make things happen to help us resolve the problem. As soon as we relax, the project takes on a life form of its own almost and it begins to run in the best way possible.

But in order to do that, we as PM's have to give up control and accept that our way might not be the right way.