Ambiguity Personas (Part 5): Sue the Scaler
Lonnie Pacelli is an Accenture/Microsoft veteran with four decades of learnings under his belt. He frequently writes and speaks on leadership, project management, work/life balance, and disability inclusion. Reach him at [email protected] and see more at ProjectManagementAdvisor.com.
My focus in this series is not only about ambiguity, but about how people respond to ambiguity and impact themselves and those around them. Those impacted could be colleagues, family or friends. As a leader, your ability to bring clarity to chaos is one of the single most important skills you can possess. So far, we’ve looked at three personas:.
- Part 1 introduced Aaron the Avoider
- Part 2 introduced Brett the Broadcaster
- Part 3 introduced Cal the Complicator
- Part 4 introduced Diane the Driver
The final persona is Sue the Scaler.
Sue was the VP of Program Management at Alloy Industries. Seven directors reported to her, each with about 20 people under them. She started at Alloy as a project manager two decades earlier, having worked her way up to her current VP position. She excelled at execution, and especially noteworthy was her ability to bring clarity to ambiguity.
When faced with an ambiguous situation, she methodically dissected the situation, separated knowns from unknowns, ensured those who needed to be involved in driving clarity had a seat at the table, drove to consensus, and did the follow-through to ensure clarity stuck.
When she was promoted to director, her mentor, Teresa, took her out for coffee.
“Sue, you know that your ability to drive clarity through ambiguity was a key factor in your promotion, right?”
Sue took …
Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.
|
"Chaos is a friend of mine." - Bob Dylan |
