Communicate, Collaborate and Worry!

  Communications Management  

Going into a project with no worries is like going for a leisurely walk in a park where most of the time you really don’t care whose dog is wondering around and which birds have returned back to their nests. In my past engagements as a project manager, I heard our CEO say many times that we get paid for results and not efforts. He was fond of project managers who had some degree of worry going into a project to deliver the results.

As a PM, I realized that on any project, things won’t move or happen without the PM taking the lead on managing the risks, deliverables and scope of the project. Like a driver of a vehicle who is always watching for pedestrians, potholes, weather, traffic conditions, health of the vehicle and passengers, a project manager cannot follow a hands-off approach with no worries. Any (and many) of these challenges carry potential to deviate the outcome of the journey.

As soon as a PM is assigned to a project, the onus of “delivering the goods” is on the PM. As the PM starts to roll up their sleeves to take charge, the worry list magically grows exponentially. Questions like…

• Do we have funding?
• Do we have buy-in from leadership?
• Do we have resources available for timely delivery?
• Is it a virtual team working offshore?

…start to pile up. While the manager struggles to find …

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