What Do Your Colleagues Think of You?

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   New Practitioners  

When I was a kid, I used to love aircraft. Military, civilian, it didn’t matter. My father had served in the Royal Air Force, so to me, planes were a passion. And being a kid, I thought I knew everything there was to know about aircraft.

So, when a family member took me to Heathrow airport outside London to watch the planes, it was a huge thrill and an opportunity for me to demonstrate how much I knew. The family member took the time to point out the different types of planes, the different tail markings for the airlines, and the countries they came from.

And what did I do? I replied to everything I was being told with, “I know.”

I must have been one obnoxious kid that day! And of course, I didn’t know everything I was being told. Had I shut up and listened a bit more, then I would have learned a huge amount. But I was a kid who thought they knew it all.

What’s the point of that anecdote? Well, I recently worked with an organization that had a new project manager who reminded me a lot of myself that day. They had led two projects—both had been successful, so they thought they were the “next great thing” in project management. No one was going to be able to tell them anything—they had passed the Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM)® exam on the first try, and they had two on-time, on-scope and on-…

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