Project Managers And Client Types: The Shape Shifter

In ancient stories and fables there’s always a character that appears as one thing at the start of the story, usually an apparent steadfast friend, but who changes when tested. Some clients certainly fall into this category.

The client who wants to be so friendly: Hail fellow well met, can’t do enough for you. We’ve all meet them, and some of us have been shafted by them. They are your friend, until there’s a problem, then all of a sudden they are siding with their employer. Or the client manager who’s a great supporter of the project until you hit rough water and then they are the project’s most vocal detractor: these are shape shifters.

Project managers should never get closer to the client than they are to their own team. Remember you are in a contractual relationship with the client. You may appear to be working for him in many ways, but your not, the man who signs your paycheck always as first call on your loyalty. So by all means be friendly, it sure beats the alternative. But, it’s a business relationship. Keep it that way.

Project Managers and Consultants - Watch your back

There any numbers of ways that you can annoy a consultancy firm, too many to list. What you have to do is make sure that your lines of communications to your manager and her manager are open, and that you know what’s being said to them about you by the consultants.

Consultants can be very manipulative as they maneuver for advantage. A key scapegoat in their book of plays is always the project manager. A primary excuse to their management is that the reason they cannot get more "wallet share" is because of you. Their managers them employ the strategy known as "getting the grit out of the machine". With you playing the role of the "grit". 

So always have your lines of communication open to all the stakeholders in your project. Always be selling the benefits of your project and your management skills. That way you minimize the chances of the being surprised. Remember the old boxing maxim: "Protect yourself at all times!". 

Project Managers: Lessons from a wedding - Communications and Malfunctions

The more we are able to communicate the more we are victims of miscommunications or malfunctions.

Last weekend I was at my eldest daughter’s – stepdaughter actually, and the importance of the distinction will be apparent as the story unfolds – wedding. The wedding was held in the Baltimore area and involved various branches of our family flying in from the UK, Texas, Oregon, and Hawaii, to name the origins of just the main participants.

Well the younger sister of the bride was flying in with her husband and toddler from Oregon on the “red eye” into BWI airport. The sisters had decided that real “Dad”, who lives in the UK and had just flown in for the festivities, would pick up the younger sister and family at the airport. This is when the first episode of miscommunication and malfunction occurred.

The miscommunication was that younger sister usually uses Southwest Airlines and she didn’t inform anyone that this time she’s using US Airways. So “Dad” is dispatched to this large airport in a strange city and land with bad information: Oops - miscommunication!

But that shouldn’t be a major problem because he’s got a mobile phone. Correction he’s got a UK mobile phone which, despite various assurances from the UK company, doesn’t work too well in the US – malfunction!

Result: fuming daughter – who’s a good little fumer when the mood takes her – sorrowful dad, and yours truly driving 20 miles at the last minute to pick up stranded family.

The second event was later the same day– “Dad” did not have a good day – and involved the wedding rehearsal: A momentous event for both Bride and “Dad”. So momentous that the bride decides to loan “Dad” her GPS system and also enter the exact address of the event. He’s also informed that he must follow the instructions and he can’t go wrong! So infallible is this system that there’s no need for an old-fashioned paper map.

Well it might have worked, I’m agnostic on GPS hence the hint of doubt in my comment, had the bride not entered the wrong building number and repeated the injunction to “just follow the directions”, 1100 is not the same as 11000. So now we have miscommunication, allied with the still malfunctioning mobile phone, no paper back up – map- and no actual building address or description. The address was in the GPS.

Result: fuming daughter, sorrowful “Dad”, and nothing your truly could do to fix it. By now “Dad” is being nicknamed “Waldo” after the children’s game “Where in the World is Waldo?” And yet it wasn’t in many regards his fault: Like King Lear he was brought low by his daughters!

So what as this to do with project managers’? Well it has a lot of learning points that are applicable to all of us.

Firstly, that second hand information is subject to distortion. “Dad” hadn’t spoken directly to second daughter so getting the wrong airline was almost guaranteed. Secondly, unless you have direct experience don’t assume that mobile phones, or any technology, will work in other countries or even parts of your own country.

Also don’t rely exclusively on technology that you are unfamiliar with and with people setting it up for you. You should always have a back up – a map or step dad. Nothing should be addressed or viewed in isolation. If you know the lay of the land: major landmarks, key people, and the general situation you can recover from malfunctions and inaccurate information. Absent them and you are lost: You are Waldo!

Project Matrix Management: The bane of every project manager.

Matrix management, where project managers do not directly control their project resources, is the norm these days. The project team members report to department managers who can, and do, change their work priorities to suit their departmental needs. When these changes occur you might, or might not be informed. You are responsible for delivering on time and to budget with a team that can be changed at any time with little or no notice. That is why I call matrix management the bane of a project manager’s life.

In my opinion this form of management is a sign of an organization that doesn’t want to be run has a project based enterprise. It doesn’t want to cede power to program and project managers. It wants to retain the old paradigm of departments and managers. It is the departmental managers who create this compromise in order to maintain their existence and provide a career path in their discipline.

This form of management also makes creating a project schedule even more difficult. Now departmental managers won’t commit either resources or even estimates until you have started the project. Our bosses want firm schedules and accurate delivery dates and yet the key resources are uncommitted until the very last moment that we need them to start work.

And the situation is getting harder. In previous decades typically projects teams where based on a single site and the team shared a general cultural heritage. So a matrix management structure could be managed by informal discussions and personal relationships. Talk at lunchtime in the cafeteria, over a pint of beer after work, or around the water cooler could alert people to changes and issues and also lead to solutions.

Over time that paradigm has changed. Now most teams are displaced not only spatially, but also in time and culture. Now matrixed teams consist of Germans, Indians, Brazilians, and Chinese, with a smattering of Americans working from their own homes. Face to face meetings are becoming the exception. Your developer resources may have managers who are also displaced from them. Creating lasting relationships and personal influence in these circumstances is all but impossible.

So now there are political issues with your team and their remote managers. You now have more interfaces to manage within your team.

How do you do it? Well with great difficulty. It takes a great deal of organization and perseverance. You need to establish a frequent set of telephone conference calls, use video (skype is one) where bandwidth permits, web meetings, etc, anything that establishes a bond between you and your team (and their managers). You need a common glossary of terms and standard forms and charts. You need to get the team to talk about what else is going on in their lives: births, children, engagements, family events, anything that puts a human face on your team and helps build empathy and understanding. It has to be communicate, communicate, and communicate all the time.

The paradox we have to address is that has we move into a more technically interconnected world, we have in fact become more unconnected, in a personal sense, from our work mates. 

Project Managers and Client Types - The Interpreter

This person sets herself up as the arbiter of what is really meant by the project specifications; contract terms, building leases etc. They usually appears almost as soon as the contract has been signed. Typically at the first planning meeting she will announce that you are responsible for providing some service that you believed the customer was clearly expected to do, at least according to the contract.

I was once on a large contract when we were informed that as consultants we could only claim eight hours a day, but that we would have to work ten hours: effectively giving them two hours of uncharged for effort. The so-called “Professional Day”. This was not just a hit to the company’s revenues it also hit the utilization rate of all the consultants. A key metric for all consultants since it not only drives bonuses it also drives job retention. 

In this case the phenomena known as the miraculous shrinking testicles appeared and our management caved and gave them the interpretation they wanted, the deal was too big.  In the long term the deal was greatly reduced and the goose didn’t lay the golden egg, it just laid a brick. But we still had our "Professional Day"!

In this instance no amount of political skill or acumen can help you manage this. When senior managers cave into this type of sharp practice then all you can do is salute and either go down with the project or move elsewhere.

In general battling with an interpreter can only be done with the full support of your management and contract people. The basic rule is to make them work for every concession. Don’t agree to any changes without a full discussion and never agree to them without consulting your managers. 

More project managers have got into trouble by accepting client interpretations of specifications or contracts than any other single error. We have all been faced with this issue. The survivors have been those who stuck to their guns until their management reached an accommodation with the client. Remember we are project managers not operations executives.