No Problem Project Management

David Schmaltz is a project manager in Takoma Park, Maryland.

  Communications Management   ProjectsAtWork  

The problem-solving skills on which project managers largely build their reputations might be greatly improved by mastering the challenge of problem-selecting instead. In short, the difficulty isn’t the problem; it's how we’re coping with it. Radical acceptance is a start.

Project managers have long-touted their problem-solving abilities. Faced with endless barrages of technical, political, emotional, financial and logistical difficulties, we feel we have to be skilled at solving those problems. And sometimes, we are. Sometimes, though, we encounter a difficulty for which we seem to be missing the proper wrenches. Other times, the solving never seems to stop as some ‘problems’ absorb every ounce of moxie we give ‘em. Ask any project manager about their real problem-solving track record and you’ll hear stories of many more good intentions than successful interventions, usually with the obligatory ego-preserving explanations already oiled and ready for deployment.

I ask any project manager I meet to describe the big, hairy problems he’s wrestling with; not only because some really terrific stories seem to live there, but to understand how the PM parses their world. For some, every difficulty, every delta between want and got, qualifies as a problem aching be solved. Others seem more sanguine, more choosey when deciding what they might address…

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