If you search for “project management” on Youtube, you’ll get a series of classroom-led style videos that go over theory, methodology, and technique. If you scroll a little further, you’ll get a lot of software and services reviews. These YouTubers aren’t real project managers and make their money primarily as influencers pushing the software featured in their videos. Theory and methodology are undoubtedly essential to have. I’m not suggesting otherwise, nor is having the right software, but neither of these is the best trait to manage a project successfully. Good project managers should have most if not all of these skills.
Inquisitiveness
When you’re first brought into a project, whether you’re the lead or an SME, you need to ask many questions. First, you want to know who’s spearheading this project. Remember that people don’t usually like ideas that aren’t theirs. Virtually every project will upset the apple cart because if it doesn’t, then why do it? And more often than not, for someone to win, someone has to lose. So you want to identify who is the winner and who is the loser. Next, you want to find out what each stakeholder does and their position at the company. You want to find out how the outcome is going to affect everyone. You also want to find out what each person feels about it. People like to talk and vent. If you ask leading questions and show some empathy, they’ll open up to you.
Psychology
You want to talk to each stakeholder and identify whether they’re for the project, apprehensive, or fully resistant. Then you want to find out why each of them feels that way, especially the resistors. Next, you want to zero in on the resistors. Find out why they’re resistant. More importantly, you should identify their personality. Are they passive/aggressive? Are they non-confrontational, or are they combative or openly belligerent? Here’s something I do.
You can read their body language and tell if they’re resistant, even if they tell you otherwise. This is a little harder to do if they’re on a video call, but you can see it in their face. Find out who their closest friends are at work, maybe a colleague or even people that work for them. Ask those people what your subject has confided in them. See if it matches what they told you. I can promise you that it won’t. Finally, you’ll need to plan on how to approach them.
Strategic
So now you have a good idea of how everyone feels about the project at hand, and you can probably anticipate how each stakeholder will react to them. The passive/aggressive resistors are the most difficult since they’ll sit in meetings and agree to everything but have no intention to partake at all. I’ve been involved in planning meetings where one of the stakeholders had a tantrum, slammed her mouse and phone around, and stormed out of the conference room. If you get one of these, it’s actually a good thing since you can then proceed with your plan in their absence and then email them what everyone decided. For the extreme resistors, you need to develop a plan that backs them into a corner where they have no choice but to get on board. If you’ve tried reasoning and logic, reassurance, and compassion, and none of it works, you need to break out more extreme measures.
You can work on getting other resistors on your side, to where they’re almost all alone. You can remove key pieces early on to gain leverage and to show that you mean business. As the lead PM, you’re paid to make the tough decisions on behalf of the client. Often times you’re brought in as the enforcer. They’ve likely attempted this project multiple times in the past and failed, so you’ve been brought in to execute. Sometimes you’re the bad guy. It’s okay, and you have enough friends. Some of this isn’t fun for sure. I’ve handled a fair amount of complex projects, and without fail, the hardest part is managing all the stakeholder’s personalities and emotions.
Perseverance
You’ll sit in in a meeting room, Zoom call, whatever. You’ve laid out a project plan in your favorite software. You’ll define stakeholders, milestones, duties, roles and tasks. Everyone will nod and agree to everything being said. You’ll put together a detailed email after the meeting outlining everything that everyone agreed. You fill your PM tool with tasks, and then you watch it. Day after day, things don’t get checked off, the needle doesn’t move the way it needs to move. You start to call the stakeholders and listen to the excuses pour in. You’ve heard them all before. They’re waiting on people to call them back. They’re too busy. They’ve been sick. Ordinarily, this is a bullshit excuse, but this is understandable in light of the current state of the world. You have to keep calling them.
Force them to move the needle. Sometimes they’ll tell you’re they’re waiting on a call back from a 3rd party. Don’t let them off the hook. Offer to set up a 3-way call right there on the spot. I’ve done this before, and low and behold, I get the 3rd party on the phone, and we move the needle a little more. Dumb luck, I guess.
If you power call someone over and over again, they ignore your number or block it. You can easily buy a throw-away DID from Skype. Pick a number similar to theirs, with the same exchange. They’ll answer that call.Once you establish yourself as a no-nonsense PM, you usually don’t get as much resistance. Still, stakeholders often have different priorities and don’t have an incentive to help move the needle.
Connections
The best kind of projects is those that you can bring your contractors. The most challenging projects are those when you have to work with existing SMEs. Whether they’re employees of your client or their own contractors, they’re usually far less motivated to work with you than if they’re your people. Years ago, I worked on a project where we were building out a data center as part of an office build-out for the client’s new office build-out. The contractor had hired an electrician to bring in enough amperage to that area of the building. Once the power had been put in, they needed to pour concrete and get that part started, so there was room for anyone for error. Sure enough, the electrician was a no-show. Something about an emergency and another client.
Small contractors often over-extend themselves and are themselves short-handed. I have several, good reliable electricians in my CRM. I made a call, and in 30 min I had my own licensed, bonded, and insured electrician onsite. If that had not happened, the project would have been delayed. The client would have had to pay all the parties involved. It’s not just a saying; time is money, sometimes a lot of money.
Regardless of what you do, you want to build a reliable network of trusted people. You also need to prepare to be the person to come in and save the day. Sometimes, you pay it forward; other times, you pay it back. When your phone rings, answer it and be prepared to be the hero of the day. Good people surround themselves with good people.
Attention to detail
You want to make a note of everything you hear and see. I can’t stress how important it is. You want to keep detailed notes. Times, people involved, who does what, how this works, who’s responsible for that. You want to be able to put together a complete picture. Depending on your project, you may want to use something like Visio to draw things out or create wireframes. The other thing about taking detailed notes is that you can use someone’s words against them if you need to. Frequently, resistors will tell you that something won’t work for a specific reason, but they had previously said otherwise, and you can play that card if you need to get past a hurdle.
Wileyness
Not sure if this even a word, but the longer you do this, the smarter and slicker you get. You learn how to write stipulations into contracts that absolve you of situations that are out of your control. You don’t do this when you start out, since problems will arise that you couldn’t have foreseen at the time. Early on, you end up eating some of these costs, which is fine as it’s a good learning experience. You don’t see it that way at the time, but it is. You learn how to pressure someone and how much pressure to apply to move things along. You discover along the way what works and what doesn’t work. You learn things like the right way to say “NO.” Do you know the right way to say no to something? You say, “Oh, shoot, I wish I could…”
Project management isn’t sexy. Unfortunately, the Youtube videos you find don’t paint a picture of what it’s really like to be knee-deep into complex projects. Some of these productivity videos show a task manager with tasks on them, such as ‘record my podcast’ or “break for lunch.” Well, if you earn your living podcasting, you don’t need a reminder to do so. As far as lunches, those come when you have a moment; you don’t get to schedule them.
