It’s Like This, Rookie…

 

One of my favorite all-time books is Once A Cowboy, by Walt Garrison (Random House, 1988). In it, Garrison relays many of the hilarious stories that came out of his time playing for the Dallas Cowboys Football Club (United States), and some of those stories had to do with his rookie season. One particular story that stands out had to do with a practical joke some of the veterans would play on rookies during training camp. One of the veterans would approach the targeted first-year player and tell him “Coach Landry wants to see you in his office, and bring your playbook.” Knowing that such a meeting meant that the player was about to be cut from the squad, the rookie would show up at Tom Landry’s office, crestfallen, playbook in hand and expecting to have to surrender it, only to be told “I didn’t call for you. Now get back out on the practice field.”

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not advocating for anything resembling hazing of you freshly-minted PMP®s. But, as something of a veteran myself, I must tell you whippersnappers that many of you do tend to manifest some attitudes and behaviors that make it really tough to refrain from engaging in a tiny bit of good-natured comeuppance, let alone taking y’all seriously. So, in the spirit of getting you past your rookie-season mistakes quicker, here are a few tips for you to keep in mind as you unpack your personal stuff into your brand-new cubicle.
•    Got your PMP®? Outstanding. So do 628,523 other people (1).  Since PMI® has been around for a little while, the PMP®is being seen more often as a basis for admittance to the club, not a golden ticket that guarantees the insightfulness of its bearer. So, odds are that other people on the project team have one as well, but they don’t spend a lot of time bragging about it. There’s a reason for that.
•    Have you had an amazingly successful stint on an amazingly successful project? Who hasn’t? Prior to writing and submitting a paper abstract about your amazing insights about what went right, go back and re-read the first bullet.
•    The members of your organization who are either reluctant to accept your way of doing things, or are actually actively opposed, are not ignorant of the particulars of your technical agenda, so stop pretending that all you need is better communications or more cooperation from them to get them to see the error of their ways. They know all about your technical approach, and simply disagree with it. It’s not their responsibility to recognize the value you bring to their project teams – it’s your responsibility to demonstrate that the management information streams your techniques and methodologies can provide are game-changers in a competitive environment.
•    For all you freshly-minted MBAs, here’s a special tip for you. Think about this: if your business school professors truly had command of some analysis technique or management science theory that constitutes a major factor between an economically successful endeavour and a failing one, why wouldn’t they just start or acquire a business, implement their ideas, and enjoy the benefits of being a corporate winner? I’m not saying that you didn’t need to learn what they had to teach, not by a long shot. But consider: when major universities feel the need to set aside additional funds for retaining key faculty members, those instructors typically belong to one of three colleges (Medicine, Law, and Engineering), and Business isn’t one of them. Of course, I’m aware that there is a lot of personnel transfer between the corporate and academic circles. All I’m doing is asking the question: which of those two groups of management experts is making more money?

As I mentioned in a previous blog, there are generally three ways of learning: by study, by observation, and by personal experience. If my rookie readers can glean some insight from this blog, then great. If not, then Coach wants to see you in his office.

And bring your playbook.
 

  (1) Project Management Professional. (2016, January 6). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 03:01, January 18, 2016, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Project_Management_Professional&oldid=698427550