Rule 2: The Passive Conduit

Rule 2: The Passive Conduit

This rule is really a corollary of Rule 1. One of the most common and serious mistakes that you can make as a project manager is to compensate for an inadequate sponsor role by making major project decisions such as scope, objectives, risk management, quality expectations, benefits realization plans, and so on by yourself.

As a project manager, your job is to take the sponsor's concept for his or her proj ect and, through participative project management processes, to define, refine, plan, and manage the development of the initial concept through to successful implementation and support.

The key is that although it is your responsibility to manage the realization of the concept, it is not your concept; it is your sponsor's.

Simply put, you are the "passive" conduit through which the dreams of the sponsor flow.

What we mean by passive in this context refers to the ownership of the sponsor's concept. In other words, the project management process is far from passive and it is your responsibility to proactively negotiate, communicate, plan, enable, facilitate, and manage the project team, stakeholder involvement, and so on. However, should you come across differences of opinions between stakeholders about the scope and objectives, quality requirements, and so on, of the project, it is your job to attempt to resolve the conflict using whatever organizational authority or personal power is available to you.

Should this fail, it is your responsibility to "push back" the conflict to your sponsor, explaining what you have done to resolve it and what decisions your sponsor needs to make to get his or her project back on track.

At this stage, you may find that your sponsor attempts to redelegate the problem to you by saying, "Oh! Thanks for letting me know. However, I am a bit busy at the moment. Why don't you handle it?" ^[4]

^[4] More likely, they'll say, "Why am I being bothered with this? Aren't you paid to manage the project?"

You are now facing the most critical decision you will face in the project. If you accept this behavior, you will be in violation of Rule 1 with all its associated consequences. Alternatively, you must firmly and politely resist the redelegation.

Try to explain again what you have already done to resolve the conflict and the impact of nonresolution of the problem on the project. Other tricks include using the " royal we" as in, "Thanks for the vote of confidence, boss, but unless we resolve this together, our project will "

Should this fail, read Rules 7 and 8 and do your best to survive.

One of the most experienced and competent project managers we have ever met ”Chris Wooley at A.M.P. ”has a wonderful comment he shares with new project managers. When asked for his opinion on major issues of scope and objectives, for example, for a project he is managing, he replies, "I have no opinion. I am just the project manager."

Rule 3: You Generally Get the Sponsor You Deserve

It is often said that people get the government they deserve. While acting as project management consultants on a large reengineering project, our group observed a similar situation with respect to project sponsors. The CEO of the organization had decided to fully empower a group of nine senior project managers. These project managers were managing a group of related projects involved in over $1 billion worth of organization redesign projects. The CEO made it clear that the project managers had the authority to decide what and how many meetings and committees they had to be involved in during their projects. This included whether they wanted to have project steering committees as well.

Initially, all the project managers decided on using project steering committees comprised of very senior executives. After three months, we reviewed the steering committee situation. Five of the project managers were adamant that their own steering committee added value to their projects and, as a result, they wanted the steering committee process to remain . The other four project managers felt that their steering committees were a waste of time and wanted to disband them.

The problem that our group had with this result was that all nine project managers had steering committees comprised of the same executives! Clearly, the issue here, given that all project managers had the same people on the steering committees was: (a) the members of the steering committees acted differently for different projects or, (b) the individual project managers acted differently toward their steering committees, resulting in different behavior.

After some research, we established that the behavior of the project managers was indeed the issue. Those who wanted their steering committee to remain had communicated openly with and proactively involved their steering committee members in decision making. Those project managers who wanted to abolish their steering committees had communicated poorly with and generally placed the members of their committees in reactive decision-making roles.

As we explain in Rules 4, 5, and 6, by communicating honestly, clearly, nontechnically, and in a timely fashion, you can influence the behavior of your senior executives in a positive manner. By delaying your communication and by using, in effect, blackmail tactics such as, "The project is in trouble and unless you then it'll fail," you could also influence the behavior of your senior executives in a negative manner.

We have since observed and confirmed this situation on many projects.