5. “Soft skills are for goofs such as the Project Manager because he doesn’t know how it all works”
It’s not smart to allow your level of technical knowledge to cloud the perception of human relationships. Continue reading
As I promised, in this post I’ll discuss eight main misconceptions about the status of Project Manager as a “Real” Manager. There are probably more, but these are the ones I’ve encountered the most during my experience in different organizations. Take a look at them, and it might facilitate your work tremendously. Continue reading
Project Manager vs. the “Real” Manager?
One can ask: what do I mean by this title? Is there even a distinction? Are Project Managers not considered “Real” Managers?
Well, theoretically, there supposed to be a perfect synergy between the Project Manager and the different Functional Managers in the organization. FM’s manage the organization and PM’s manage the projects inside the organization. The problem is that as Project Manager usually comes from outside the organization, he’s naturally treated as outsider and could be even perceived as a threat to “local” managers. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that there are significant differences in the skill sets of PM’s and FM’s, so they are not always speaking the same language about similar subjects. This lack of communication and trust between the two critical Management branches of the organization can seriously disrupt the working process, so I find it advisable to mitigate the conflict in order to reduce possible losses.
Trust is best built by understanding the other side, so in my next post I’ll try to reverse some existing myths about Project Manager not being a “Real” Manager.
Nothing speaks louder about particular Manager’s style than the way he conducts the decision making process. Some prefer to let others make decisions for them (thus trying to escape responsibility), while others demonstrate a completely opposite behavior by making all the decisions on their own.
But in all cases, Manager’s role in this process is crucial. Ideally, Continue reading
As we saw previously, the decision making process is actually very structured and the quality of our decisions depends on how good we are in following every single step of this process. While each step has its own predicaments and complications, we have outlined the main tools and techniques to overcome those.
However, in order to successfully manage this process, it is imperative to consider Continue reading
Imagine someone approaches you at a party and asks what you do for a living. You proudly answer that you are a “(level of seniority) Manager at (name of industry/ company)”. But then you’re asked: “Yeah, but what do you DO there?” How would you describe your job in one sentence to someone who has never managed people or projects? Continue reading
As I’ve written so much about building a Perfect Team, it seems logical to discuss what would sustain this team long enough to produce meaningful results. Naturally, it all revolves around the concept of Employee’s Loyalty.
I haven’t seen any direct mentioning of loyalty in employee’s contracts and, not living in Japan, Continue reading
When my generation was still crunching through their academic degrees in the 90-s, knowledge had some added value. Despite the fact that Internet and search engines had already existed back then, Continue reading
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