Stanley E. Portny - Project Management For Dummies

No direct authority: For most projects, the project manager and team members have no direct authority over each other. Therefore, the rewards that usually encourage top performance (such as salary increases, superior performance appraisals, and job promotions) aren’t available. In addition, conflicts over time commitments or technical direction may require input from a number of sources. As a result, they can’t be settled with one unilateral decision (see Chapter 12for suggestions on how to work effectively with people when you have no direct authority over them).

The PMI Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct reflects the following values:

Responsibility: The condition of being obligated to do or fulfill something.

Respect: The feeling or understanding that someone or something is good, valuable, useful, and worthwhile and shall be treated as such.

Fairness: A quality or condition marked by impartiality and free from self-interest, prejudice, or favoritism.

Honesty: Truthfulness and integrity, free from deception or fraud.

The twelve principles of project management (see Chapter 1for more on these) are all closely aligned with these four values. PMI makes the following distinction between values and principles:

Principles are foundational guidelines for strategy, decision-making, and problem solving, intended to guide the behavior of people involved in projects (without addressing the ethics of such behaviors).

Values establish expectations for moral conduct.

In other words, the principles describe the “what” and the values and code of ethics describe the “how” to conduct yourself as a project manager. Let’s dive a bit further into each of these values to understand how they pertain to you. You’ll probably find that none of these values are exclusive to project management and each of them should be incorporated into all aspects of your life, not only your work.

This quote, attributed to Sir Winston Churchill, captures the importance and potential reward of responsibility and even begins to reveal one of the reasons people tend to gravitate toward and respond positively to the leadership of those who are generally perceived as responsible.

Let’s be real — as a project manager, you’re responsible for all aspects of your project: the product or service to be delivered, the budget, the schedule, your project team, managing risks, ensuring that your stakeholders receive timely and meaningful status updates and are ultimately satisfied, and more. If the idea of taking on increased responsibility doesn’t appeal to you, then project management may not be a great fit. However, you’ve already taken responsibility for advancing your PM knowledge by reading this book and also, presumably, preparing to sit for the PMP certification exam. Both are very responsible choices that will almost certainly help you achieve greatness!

Few things can derail your project faster than a lack of respect and professionalism between project team members, and a team culture of respect begins with you as the project manager. Project team members need to feel they are working in an environment that encourages collaboration, out-of-the-box thinking, and open and effective communication.

The next best idea, suggestion, or solution for your project could reside in the mind of a team member who may not feel comfortable injecting their point of view into a conversation where disrespect is deemed acceptable. Would you blame them? What a shame it would be if you and all your stakeholders missed out on that idea or solution because the environment isn’t one of mutual respect, openness, and understanding!

Impartial, objective decisions based on facts and data, not on opinions, are the cornerstone of a fair project, project team, and work environment. We share with you that most decisions will be met with acceptance by some and resistance by others. It’s rare that you’ll have the opportunity to make impactful decisions that provide only positive outcomes for everyone involved. With that said, decisions are significantly easier to accept, whether they benefit you or not, if they are made and communicated in a fair and equitable manner.

Imagine you are working on a project (as an individual contributor, not the project manager) with a team of engineers, quality assurance specialists, and a project manager to design and build a new high-tech widget. Now, let’s assume that the project manager, Tanya, has been employed by your organization for over ten years and her son, Zack, is an intern serving as one of the engineers assigned to the project. Tanya routinely overrules you and the other engineers in favor of Zack’s ideas for the widget’s design, even though not one of his ideas has yet to work, and she rarely provides any explanation for overruling the more senior engineers for Zack’s ideas.

Tanya’s nepotism towards Zack is unfair and demotivating to others involved with the project and can be detrimental to the project’s overall success. This particular scenario can be tricky, though, because we don’t want to openly call out Zack each time his ideas are considered over everyone else’s (that would only serve to shame Zack with no beneficial outcome, especially since it isn’t Zack’s fault that Tanya continually favors only his ideas). Nor do we want to blatantly accuse Tanya of favoring her son despite the availability of objectively better ideas on multiple occasions from numerous team members (doing so could cause Tanya to become defensive or, worse yet, to dig in and continue to show favoritism toward Zack).

After the first couple demonstrations of such egregious unfairness, most rational team members would begin to become disillusioned and disinterested in providing meaningful contributions. They would understandably learn to expect that Tanya will continue to disregard their inputs in favor of Zack’s, without justification. Unfairness can become toxic to a project team, eventually resulting in a lack of trust of the project manager, which is very difficult to rebuild, and resentment.

By the way, if you do find yourself in a situation where someone shows obvious favoritism or otherwise flawed decision-making, as with Tanya in the previous example, keep the following in mind to avoid the perception that you’re accusing or attacking:

Be objective: People can become understandably irrational when considering family and other personal matters. Rather than pointing fingers and blaming Tanya for favoring Zack, stick to the facts of specific situations where certain ideas were overlooked in favor of Zack’s idea. Describe the results of such decisions (why Zack’s idea didn’t work out and why you believe one or more of the overlooked ideas would have been worth pursuing instead).

Don’t be selfish: Your concern for the project team, the client, your organization’s leadership, and for all the other project stakeholders, as well as the project’s ultimate success or failure, are all excellent reasons to be concerned that favoritism or other unfair practices may have a negative impact. Be sure to separate, from your discussion with Tanya, any feelings of personal resentment or frustration. This won’t help present your most effective argument for ending the unfair practice (facts and data are almost always more difficult to write off than a feeling or opinion).