14.7 Conflict Avoidance

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14.7 Conflict Avoidance

A chronic distaste for conflict or controversy infects a huge class of corporate managers who believe that "rocking the boat" is unacceptable behavior under virtually any circumstance. That is too bad, because every project has moments crying for spontaneity, especially when stakeholders cannot come together on strategy, budget, timelines, or sign-offs. Project managers have to deal with this. As was pointed out in Chapter 12, this sort of circumstance should be handled without choosing sides or advancing one's own agenda or prejudice. Anyone who has been there will also acknowledge that remaining neutral and dispassionate during these moments is far more easily said than done.

Your boss may get involved in these rhubarbs by trying to quell the uproar without actually closing out the issue. That is to say, he or she intervenes without adding much value. This is not surprising given that keeping a lid on things is a basic instinct of the highly political supervisor. If your boss is this sort, you should adopt a strategy that gets things resolved without generating any noise. This allows your supervisor to be comfortable with the "no news is good news" condition you have choreographed for him. This may require discrete offline lobbying on your part so that consensus is built without much public posturing or scrutiny. In other words, your goal should be to get a problem solved without drawing attention to it, your part in the fix, or the path to redemption.

This last paragraph may sound like the confessions of a sneak, but I deny that emphatically. [3] If you are being paid to be a project manager, then manage your project. If every issue that confronts you gets up to your boss, then you run the risk of appearing transparent (i.e., adding little value), and of possibly being quite the wimp, too. One of the occasionally scary responsibilities of being a project manager is being the project's sole parent, especially during those moments when selfless and fearless leadership are in order. To be honest, there have been times when I wanted the boss to intervene, but he or she was nowhere to be found and, I am certain, quite deliberately so. This is a balancing act, to be sure, with no hard and fast rules around it other than this one. Do the best you can to resolve issues without your boss's assistance. Understand that anything you kick upstairs may come back in unrecognizable form or create conditions or additional work that is neither appealing nor helpful.

[3]Well, sort of.



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Complex IT project management(c) 16 steps to success
Complex IT Project Management: 16 Steps to Success
ISBN: 0849319323
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 231
Authors: Peter Schulte

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