Making PM Make Sense in the Boardroom

Mark Mullaly is president of Interthink Consulting Incorporated, an organizational development and change firm specializing in the creation of effective organizational project management solutions. Since 1990, it has worked with companies throughout North America to develop, enhance and implement effective project management tools, processes, structures and capabilities. Mark was most recently co-lead investigator of the Value of Project Management research project sponsored by PMI. You can read more of his writing at markmullaly.com.

  Communications Management   Knowledge Management   Lessons Learned   Strategy  

If there is one thing almost guaranteed to make a project manager cringe, it's the idea of having to give a presentation to the executive or board of their organization. Perhaps this doesn’t apply to all project managers, but enough of them to make this a topic well worth discussing. In particular, it is worth exploring why this kind of presentation is prone to inspiring anxiety and dry heaves. It is also helpful to understand what an executive-level audience is actually looking for from its presentations; and, most constructively, to think about how to develop and deliver an effective presentation with confidence and credibility.

Understanding why executive presentations inspire fear is a good first place to start. After all, we're all adults. We all have hopes and fears and wants and regrets. We all put on our pants one leg at a time. So where does the anxiety come from? Well, for starters, we are hardwired to take our cues from hierarchy and power. And, like it or not, executives are above us in the pecking order, and do enjoy alpha status in the pack we call our organizations. They have the opportunity to help or hurt our careers. Delivering bad news or indifferent news--or delivering news badly--is therefore likely to be a major source of increased blood pressure and elevated heart rates because we don’t want it to be a trigger for the exit door …

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