Teachable Moments: Find the Disconnect

Dr. Nicolle Bourget is a certified project management professional with experience delivering technology and business transformation projects and programs. Nicolle has over 20 years of experience working on projects within different industries and continues to be fascinated by how the human element impacts project results.

 

Teachable moments are formed when you have done something--regardless of the outcome--and learned from the experience. Learning makes us better at what we do and provides a great opportunity to develop others and sharpen skills. We’ve compiled our best Teachable Moments from our community members for you to learn from and share with other project managers.

There is an expectation that a project manager comes with a specific set of skills and a basic understanding of the profession, but this is not always the case. In one particularly memorable program, I was puzzled by the amount of overtime and stress that a project manager was experiencing. The project manager was a long-term employee and had a great record of delivering projects on time and within budget--but something was obviously wrong.

In due course, I asked this project manager for a status report. Specifically, I asked not what had been completed but rather for him to confirm that the application development was on track according to schedule. His response surprised me. He informed me that he was too busy to track that information and that such status checks were not part of a project manager’s role. After a brief moment of silence, I regrouped and suggested that we meet the next day for coffee.

After considering several approaches, I decided that I wanted to understand why he had this view …

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