Research consistently points out that project success is strongly affected by the degree to which a project has the support of top management and that ties directly into your ability to handle managing upward relations. Such support is reflected in an appropriate budget, responsiveness to unexpected needs, and a clear signal to others in the…
Category: Project Manager
Leading by Example
A highly visible, interactive management style is not only essential to building and sustaining cooperative relationships, it also allows project managers to utilize their most powerful leadership tool—their own behavior, thus creating what is called leading by example. Often, when faced with uncertainty, people look to others for cues as to how to respond and…
Management by Wandering Around
Once you have established who the key players are that will determine success, then you initiate contact and begin to build a relationship with those players. Building this relationship requires a management style employees at Hewlett-Packard refer to as “management by wandering around” (MBWA) to reflect that managers spend the majority of their time outside…
Network Building Methods
The first step to social network building is identifying those on whom the project depends for success — Mapping Dependencies. The project manager and his or her key assistants need to ask the following questions: Whose cooperation will we need? Whose agreement or approval will we need? Whose opposition would keep us from accomplishing the project?…
Influence as Currency Exchange
To successfully manage a project, a manager must build a cooperative network among divergent allies and make use of their influence. Networks are mutually beneficial alliances that are generally governed by the law of reciprocity. The basic principle is that “one good deed deserves another, and likewise, one bad deed deserves another.” The primary way…
How To Be An Effective Project Manager in a World Full of Contradictions
An effective project manager has to be able to deal with the contradictory nature of his work. Why would I say that, well here is my view: Project management is, at first glance, a misleading discipline in that there is on inherent logic in the progression from formulating a project scope statement, creating a WBS,…
High Performance Project Team: Pitfalls
A high-performance project team can produce dramatic results. However, like any good think, there is a dark side to a project team that a manager needs to be aware of. I referred to this phenomenon as projectitis in this article. Now I would like to examine in more detail some of the pathologies that a high-performance…
Project Plan, is it important to have one?
Well, every course, article and training provider out there is stressing about the importance of having a project plan. It’s as simple as that. A project plan will help you plan, execute and control your project, at least that is the official definition. I will like to state my personal view on the subject as…
Skills a project manager should nurture
Chapter 9 of a much more comprehensive post Project Management Starting Out Guide. Let’s get right in and discover the areas where an aspiring project manager should focus. Developing the right skills is crucial to your success. Project Manager Skills An innate leader by innate leader, I mean one appointed by their peers, rather than…
Leadership and How It Ruins Our Every Day
Leadership…well, this is a sour subject for many of us. I think that most of us have encountered, at some point in their careers, people in leadership roles who were incompetent and misguided about their real abilities. This impacts every aspect of our lives, be it personal or career related and we should really talk…