Building Up You

Mark Mullaly is president of Interthink Consulting Incorporated, an organizational development and change firm specializing in the creation of effective organizational project management solutions. Since 1990, it has worked with companies throughout North America to develop, enhance and implement effective project management tools, processes, structures and capabilities. Mark was most recently co-lead investigator of the Value of Project Management research project sponsored by PMI. You can read more of his writing at markmullaly.com.

  Career Development  

Hi there. You. Yes, you. Don’t think I don’t see you there. Don’t think I don’t know why you’re here. You care about what you do. You want to do it better. You value being effective in your role, and you’re trying to figure out the secrets of how everyone else manages to be more awesome. How they do it better. How they get results that you struggle with, and they make it look easy. You know who I’m talking about. And you know that I know.

I mean, can you believe the nerve of that person in yesterday’s meeting? They’ve only been on the project for a couple of weeks. They’re young. They’re still learning. They don’t have anywhere near your level of experience, and yet there they were. Speaking up. Expressing their opinion. Saying exactly the same thing you’d already been thinking. And getting all the credit for their observation, when you’ve been thinking about and trying to get people to pay attention to that exact same issue for months.

It's not fair. It’s not right. It shouldn’t be allowed.

After all, you’re really good at what you do. You are capable, and talented. You’ve got experience. You have been there, you have done that, and you have not just a drawer but an entire dresser full of t-shirts to prove it.

So what’s going on? Why is this so hard…

Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.