Hello Dear colleagues PMs, I have never thought I will be in this situation. I hope you can help and share your advice/ experience.
I am PM since many years (10+) in a global IT company, mainly leading process improvement projects in customer support. PMP, LSS Green Belt and ITIL Practitioner certified and really passionate about Project Management and (Servant) Leadership. Six months ago, changing to Services (more Sales oriented culture, thus also more aggressive) and taking over the lead of a high priority global project (before really knowing the business). Despite things running pretty chaotic, IT delivering always late and low quality just to meet deadlines plus zero visibility & transparency, I became a PM of a Project Team of 20-30+ years experienced experts. Additionally, those guys are my peers in the new team I joined (consisting of 2 PMs and 7 Process Engineers) which is extremely SME oriented (even all the mangers in the org are rather SMEs than people mgrs). Now, my core team has a huge problem with me being collaborative, empathic and focusing on transparency and communication. They feel offended that I ask for their expertise, but I take decisions which they don’t like and serve the other stakeholders. From bad experience in previous projects they try to avoid doing work for other teams, thus refusing support to others and putting the project success at risk (from my point of view). They were also used that previous PMs came to them with a ready-to-go project plan and just let them execute dedicated tasks. Now, that I asked them to actively participate in project planning, they completely blocked and refused to further work with me (poorly planned workload in other assignments also plays a big role). On the other hand, I experience very good collaboration with the rest of the stakeholders and extended project team – they are happy that I keep them engaged, support them, give them the needed information. In summary, my Project Core Team of 20-30+ years experts are angry with me and refusing to further work with me. Have you ever experienced such situation, and would you know an advice to me? Many thanks in advance! Best regards, Rado Saving Changes...
