Voices on Project Management

by Dave Wakeman

In writing for Voices on Project Management, I like to tie everything back to a business outcome like business growth, innovation, or cost savings.

This month, I wanted to combine my focus on business growth with the new kid on the block, ChatGPT, to do some market research using a prompt to see what I came up with.

Here’s the prompt in case you’d like to steal it:

I want you to do customer research for me. Tell me 10 dreams, 10 frustrations, 10 wants, and 10 fears that my audience experiences related to business growth and innovation through the lens of project managers.

Format the 10 dreams, 10 frustrations, 10 wants, and 10 fears in a structured table. The x-axis should be numbered 1-10 and the y-axis should include frustration, want, fear, and dream.

This month, let’s look at the 10 frustrations:

1. Lack of clear vision or buy-in from leadership for growth initiatives
2. Scope creep due to shifting priorities during growth phases
3. Difficulty finding and retaining skilled team members for innovative projects
4. Siloed departments hindering collaboration and information flow
5. Unrealistic timelines imposed by leadership for innovation projects
6. Difficulty measuring the ROI of innovative projects with long-term impact
7. Lack of risk tolerance from leadership, hindering bold innovative ideas
8. Constant firefighting due to reactive decision-making instead of proactive planning
9. Difficulty adapting existing processes and workflows for innovative projects
10. Lack of recognition and appreciation for the challenges of managing innovative projects

Do we see any patterns?

I do.

These all seem consistent with a lack of strategy, especially a challenge around defining the ultimate strategic question: “What does success look like?” These also fit into the idea of business acumen, a topic I often cover.

Let’s think about what we can do to deal with these frustrations.

1. Make sure you are clear on your direction. In my strategy work, the essential question is, “What does success look like?” You must know the answer to this question because you can’t be successful without it.

A lack of vision around growth will be present because you lack direction. You can’t properly measure ROI without knowing what success look like.

All of us have likely been involved in too much firefighting. The root cause typically being decisions that are pushed off or left unmade because of a lack of direction.

2. Invest in your communications efforts. Buy in! Buy in! Buy in!

Am I right?

The time you invest in communicating the project’s scope, the place the project has in your business’s success, and the things you need to meet your timeline will help you set yourself up for success.

Poor communication is frustration’s foundation. You can only defeat this frustration by being clear, concise, and easily understood in your communications.

Your ability to achieve this is built from the answer to the ultimate question: “What does success look like?”

3. Manage up and down. Project managers have to manage in both directions to cut down on frustrations.

• Managing down will help you hire and retain key team members.
• Managing up will help you fight scope creep, gain buy-in, and fight unrealistic timelines.

Looking at ChatGPT’s list, the frustration of silos points to the importance of managing across the organization as well.

Your ability to manage up, down and around the organization is built on your direction and your ability to communicate effectively. Granted, you still aren’t guaranteed success.

My questions to you are: Do these frustrations track with your experience? Is there a frustration that you don’t see on the list? Or, is this list totally crazy?

Let me know below!

Then, next month we can look at one of the other columns.

Dave Wakeman

I recently wrote about a podcast I listened to that shared key qualities project managers have. This month, I return to the topic and share the qualities I think the best project managers have.

Here are the nine qualities I look for when I think about great project managers:

1. Business acumen: This is my first key because I recognize that a project doesn’t happen in a vacuum. The best project managers recognize that and can frame the project in a way that highlights the impact and the potential opportunities that the project creates. All in the context of the world around your organization.

2. Negotiation skills: Getting people on the same page, winning the resources you need, and overcoming objections are key to any project’s success. That’s why negotiation skills are right up there when I look for great project managers.

3. Communication skills: Spoken, written, physical…all of them. They matter to the modern project manager because there are so many ways to communicate, and getting your point across can make the difference between success and failure.

4. Empathy: Life is tough. Your job is tough. The world is tough. Having empathy can uncover a layer of the team you are working with that can help you get the project completed.

Don’t confuse this with not being driven. Knowing how to deal with people is a key driver of a PM’s success, and not recognizing the human element and pushing through no matter what is likely a reason you are struggling to get results.

5. Consensus building: I’m mining a similar vein to communication and negotiation skills, but to me consensus building is about pulling those two things together and having everyone involved in the project recognize that this might not be the perfect solution, but it is a workable solution.

That’s key because too much communication is one way, “my way or the highway” communications. And too much of our negotiation can feel like having to “win” every point.

Building consensus is a recognition that you must try and find the “win-win” more often than folks let on.

6. Calm under fire: I had a boss in my 20s that would come to me and say, “Dave, it seems like the more pressure we are dealing with, the easier things come for you.”

I agree.

This skill can be hard to train for, but being able to not get flustered or freaked out by the changes and pressure that come during intense moments of a project can be a key to your success as a project manager.

Where do you start? Planning as much as you can.

7. View PM as a key job: Some people fall into the role of project manager, and it is just a job that doesn’t carry much importance in the grand scheme of their thinking.

To me, the best PMs look at the job as a key role in the organization. You can be successful just doing the job, but the best PMs look at the job as a key role that deserves respect and expertise.

8. Broad knowledge, not just skill knowledge: Again, this runs next to business acumen in my thinking, but it is different.

To me, broad knowledge allows you to make connections from different parts of the world around you. In my strategy work, I might pull an example from watching sports to illustrate an idea to a pharma company.  I might use my experience in politics to show a sports team how a concept applies to them. Or, I might use an example from a novel to make a larger philosophical point.

The key is that you want to be gaining ideas and perspectives from as many points as possible.

9. A desire and willingness to learn: Desire and willingness are two different things.

A lot of people want to learn, but they don’t follow through.

A lot of people are willing to learn, but they don’t receive the opportunities.

You need to combine the two, because one thing that dominates modern project managers’ lives is that things are constantly changing.

You have to be prepared for that—and you can only do that by learning.

What do you think of my list? Have I missed something obvious? Are you going to put some of these things to work from this month’s list or last month’s list? Let me know in the comments below.

By Dave Wakeman

I caught myself listening to the 2Bobs podcast recently and the episode about the qualities of the best project managers. David C. Baker shared a list with his co-host, Blair Enns: 

1. Command authority naturally 

2. Quick sifting abilities 

3. Re-evaluate project priorities frequently 

4. Listen to stakeholders…really listen 

5. Predictable communication cadences 

6. Domain expertise in project management 

7. Consensus-building skills 

8. Informal networks 

9. Didn’t just happen into project management 

What do you think of the list? Let me know in the comments below. What do I think of the list? Let me share a few thoughts. 

First, the ability to get people’s attention and command authority to lead is key in any leadership position.  

This one rings true. For us, I’d also like to point out that being commanding doesn’t mean being loud or outgoing. It means having presence and having people believe you’ll get them where they are going.  

Second, sifting abilities and evaluation skills go together.  

I write about business acumen here regularly. David’s list items would fit the idea of business acumen because you need to be able to consume data quickly, organize it, and take action within the context of your environment.  

Third, being an effective communicator has been at the heart of this column for years. It is also the No. 1 reason I would put down if you asked me why project managers fail—they don’t do a good job of communicating up and down the chain of their project.  

To me, this goes to the idea of consensus building as well. If you aren’t a good communicator, you aren’t going to be able to build consensus because you are going to miss important points.  

Fourth, informal networks. I love this one because I’ve spent a long time building them. I have my newsletters, podcasts and community, all with people from a diverse section of industries, countries and backgrounds. I like to tell myself that this is one of the keys to my success.  

The key point that David and Blair were making is that the wider those informal networks, the broader your frame of reference for your experiences. Having a broader experience base is going to help you, no matter what experience you might have.  

Finally, project management as a practice and an area of expertise. I have found that some of the best project managers I’ve ever met wouldn’t necessarily call themselves by that title, but they’d agree that they get things done.  

But getting things done is a special skill—one that you don’t just happen into, and can’t really wing. You might develop it outside of the normal project management practices (I developed mine in marketing, nightclubs, and sports business), but the key idea is that you develop expertise in project management with the same attention to your craft that any other respected professional would (even if you don’t call yourself a project manager).  

Overall, I like David’s list. As a challenge to myself, I’m going to make next month’s post about my own list of attributes of “the best project managers.”  

I’ll also be curious to see what attributes you think the best project managers have. You can leave those in the comments section (I’ll even try and use your ideas in an upcoming piece).  

Dave Wakeman

November 2023

I recently wrote about the nature of artificial intelligence in project management, and I think people might have been confused that I’d put the highlight so heavily on the person managing the project.

My take has nothing to do with not believing that AI can be a powerful tool, if used well. Nor should my take imply that you should ignore AI.

As always, my take is about the people involved in managing a project. The things that only us humans can do.

With that in mind, I wanted to revisit some of the foundations of the human skills that we need to be successful PMs, no matter what kind of project we are working on.

1. Presence: You need to be there when you are working on a project. You need to listen to the stakeholders and team members you are talking with. You need to be aware of the situation you are involved in. You need to not try and juggle many things at once.

Great project managers are in the moment, working through the task at hand, even when there are tons of other tasks demanding their attention.

2. People Skills: People manage projects. People work on projects. Without people, there are no projects.

To be successful as a PM, you have to be successful in dealing with people. This doesn’t call for over-the-top extroversion, but it does require that you be able to build coalitions, negotiate and get people to take actions.

One of the challenges we all struggle with from time to time is our individual area of responsibility, but the best PMs recognize that everything is connected.

3. Perception: Another name for this is business acumen. I’ve written about business acumen in the past. I’ve even hinted at it in the point above. The key for PMs is that you need to know the context of your project and be able to actually take action on what’s going to deliver the most value for your organization and the stakeholders you serve.

Perception requires you to bring context to every encounter with team members, stakeholders and sponsors. It isn’t enough to look at the scope of work; to be truly successful, you have to go beyond the first level and look deeper to the core value that the project is creating in your world—and the world around the project.

4. Proficiency: You have to be able to deliver. As a PM, proficiency might come in the form of great negotiation skills. You might need the ability to get people to see their responsibilities and roles from a different situation, a more expansive POV.

Proficiency is also likely to change from moment to moment because one of the biggest skills we all need is managing change and uncertainty. Being proficient at that is likely the most important skill we can all develop, now and into the future.

Let me ask you: What are the core skills that you feel need to be in the tool kit of the modern PM?

Let me know in the comments below.

Dave Wakeman

October 2023

Andy Jordan wrote an interesting article recently on rebranding risk. That got me thinking about people’s relationship to risk, especially since any decision we make has a certain amount of risk involved.

Here I share a few ways that I suggest you think about risk….

1. Know that every decision carries risk.

There is no such thing as a risk-free decision.

Acting on something carries risk.

Not acting on something carries risk.

Recognizing that any action requires a certain comfort with the unknown allows you to move to a more productive posture. One focused on the opportunity at hand.

Instead of thinking you’ll eliminate risk, this type of thinking can enable you to focus on risk management.

• What are the possible outcomes and risks if we take action?
• What is the possibility if we do nothing?
• Are there things we can do to limit or eliminate potential downsides?
• What about the upsides to inaction?
• The upsides to action?

It is unlikely that you’ll find a risk-free solution, but you can probably find a course of action where the potential reward is greater than the perceived danger in taking action.

2. Understand that if risk wasn’t involved, there would be no change.

The twin to the first point is that risk comes with change. Every action carries a certain amount of risk, certainly. There is also no guarantee that your risk will succeed.

At the same time, there is often risk because you need to create change in a project or an organization. Understanding the necessity of risk to change helps people take action.

As Tottenham Hotspur manager Ange Postecoglou observed, “If you want change, you have to do something differently.”

That’s at the heart of risk management: You can’t expect things to be different if you don’t do things differently.

Risk is a prerequisite of change.

3. Move your focus to the opportunities at hand.

It could be that the opportunity in front of you will improve your processes in a way that will enable you to save time, money and other resources in a project with a tight budget.

The opportunity could be in building out a new product or service that opens your business up to new chances.

The opportunity could come in the form of learning and development of your team members or yourself.

Opportunity is all over. But it often comes because of the change that new solutions or new processes create.

Learning a new skill/process or creating a new product is all risky stuff, but risk is the partner of opportunity. Again, without change, nothing new happens—and that requires risk.

I appreciate Andy thinking about risk in a new way. For me, I always look at the opportunity first. Then, think about risk later. That is sometimes risky as well—because there have been occasions where I could have used a bit more patience before action.

Of course, some of these risky actions paid off incredibly. And that’s the point: Risk and reward go hand in hand. Nothing changes without change, and that is risky.

How do you think about risk in your own projects…and life?