When PMs Turn Bad

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

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When ProjectManagement.com told me that the theme for October was horror stories I knew that I wouldn’t have any trouble coming up with a few experiences to write about. However, as I was thinking through which ones contained something meaningful for us PMs to learn from, it struck me that one of the most important things to have is self-awareness--we have to recognize when it is we as project managers that are causing the problems, and when our team members are telling their friends and colleagues about horror stories where we are the bad guys.

That’s what I want to focus on in this article, and I want to use some real-life scenarios that I experienced. I have seen situations where each of the problems that I describe below have happened, not all with a single project or PM, but during the course of my career; they are out there, and you need to make sure that you aren’t living with (or causing) similar difficulties.

The “contextless” PM
This is a situation that I have seen several times, and it’s a horror that creeps up on a project--the damage that it does is not always immediately apparent. PM’s who create this horror are generally very good at planning projects; they are able to get their project teams to focus on the tasks that have to be completed and can develop some of the best work breakdown structures and …

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