Michael Gerber, in his book, The E-Myth, points out that many businesses have problems because managers work in the business rather than on the business. That is, they become so involved in doing all the work required to run the business day-to-day that they never do anything to develop or grow the business. As an example of this, consultants know that you must set aside at least one day a week to actively seek new clients (called selling!). The selling activity is working on the business, while the consulting work they do is working in the business.
Many years ago I had a friend who decided to become a consultant, and he got a job with a large company and left his regular employment. One day I asked him what he was doing to obtain his next client, and he said, "I want to devote full-time to servicing this one." Three months later, the consulting work was completed for his single client, and he began scurrying around trying to acquire new clients. After several months of this, in which he had nibbles but no "bites," he had to get another regular job and abandon his consulting dream.
The kiss of death for project managers is to be what is euphimistically called a working project manager. That means, of course, that the person responsible for the project is required to do some of the same work as members of the project team. The net result is that the PM spends most of her time doing work (which always has a higher priority than managing) and managing the project suffers. The double bind she finds herself in is that when her boss does her performance appraisal, she will be told, "Well, Andrea, you did your work well this past year, but you really need to improve on how you manage your projects."
I have seen this happen many times. Project management should be considered a full-time job. You may be able to manage several smaller projects or one large one, but having to do any of the work nearly always results in the "doing" versus "managing" trap.
Speaking of many projects, the second kiss of death is trying to manage way too many projects. I am told by participants in my seminars that they are managing as many as 20 projects. With all due respect, I say they are not managing 20 projects. They may have 20 on a list, and they may switch between them periodically, but nobody can manage that many at one time.
At best, most people find 3-6 smaller projects to be about the limit. If you think about this on a regular workday basis, even that would mean you could devote somewhere between one and 3 hours a day to each project, which I believe is minimal time to allocate to managing. If you're spending less time than that, the projects that you are supposed to be managing are essentially just drifting.
I know what some of you are thinking: Jim just doesn't understand my situation. I can't do anything about it. Well, I do understand. You always have choices. If you accept these situations, then you accept the consequences. How are you living your life? How much stress, frustration, and anxiety do you feel every day? What is this doing to your health? I can tell you that long-term stress will take its toll on you. If you don't believe me, read Bruce Lipton's book, The Biology of Belief. You owe it to yourself to take control of your life and get out of such stressful situations.
In my next blog, I'll discuss how you should approach this.
Meanwhile, be well.
Jim Lewis
(c) 2009 by James P. Lewis
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This post intrigues me. I have been been one of those project managers who has had an unreasonable number of projects to manage: I was basically put in an impossible situation by management personnel who simply refused to understand the job of project managers. I did say "no", and paid a price. (No regrets.) Sadly, many project managers don't say "no" and we continue to be managed by people who simply don't understand what it is that we do. My only conclusion: project managers need to spend more time explaining and selling our profession to the people that control the purse strings.
ReplyDeleteGreat blog by the way!