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.