The Reputation Game

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.

  Career Development  

Over the years, I’ve come to realize there are a number of recurring project management arguments to which there are no definitive answers. Of course that doesn’t prevent people from having the arguments, nor does it prevent them from having passionate opinions.

One such argument is whether a project manager can be successful if the project fails. Some will argue that a PM can succeed on a failing project because the reasons for failure may be beyond their (or the team’s) control, while others will suggest that a failed project is a reflection on a PM who could, and perhaps should, have done a better job. My personal opinion is that project managers can absolutely be viewed as successful when the project fails, but they have to be cautious not to establish a track record of failed projects because that will absolutely reflect on them and impact their career prospects.

This leads to thinking about how a project manager’s reputation is established, and by extension how a PM can proactively manage that reputation to protect and enhance their career—and that’s what I want to explore here.

In preparing for this article I asked a few colleagues what they considered to be part of their reputation—what were the elements they considered to make up that collective term. Project success was one of the elements they identified, but it wasn…

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