If you’re reading this, then you likely already know the answer. You know it either because A) you know that having all ‘yes’ men on our projects would be a bad thing or B) you know from the way I start many of my articles I’m being sarcastic and you want to see what I have to say on the subject. Either way, thanks for stopping by.
Project managers need to be confident – maybe even arrogant at times. But do we know everything? We may know a lot or at least need to act like we do, but we certainly aren’t the authority on everything. If we think we are, we won’t last long because we’ll screw up a project very badly sooner or later and we’ll be gone.
So, do we want a project full of agreeable project team members? Do we want unbridled obedience? Do we want out project troops to walk right off the edge like those funny lemmings in the animated Ice Age movie? Heck no!
Conflict is good
Conflict, disagreement, correction, creative and critical feedback – they are all good things, even if we sometimes don’t want to hear them. What would the benefit of having everyone agree with us on the project team? True, decisions would be fast and easy to make. Progress would never cease. Momentum would never be lost. But if my wife had never told me that something was a bad idea or that maybe there was a better way to do that, then we’d have some pretty funky home projects completed around our house that make no sense at all. See what I mean?
Team think
Our project team of technical experts was put together for a reason. We are the project managers. We oversee the project and liaison with executive management, the customer, and many third party groups on many aspects of the project including status, issues, contracts, agreements, assumptions, and approvals. However, we rely – or we should rely, anyway – on our skilled project team resources to help us make decisions and determine best courses of action on project tasks throughout the engagement. Every task should be discussed – to some degree. Team decisions are needed throughout and to rely just on our own expertise and understanding would be the truest form of ignorance. And a direct path to project failure.