Managing Stressful Situations

In my last post, I discussed the negative effects of stress. Ultimately, stress takes its toll on your mind, body, and relationships. You owe it to yourself to deal positively with stressful situations.
I made a lot of mistakes in my career as a project manager. I suppose that's one reason I'm qualified to give advice to others. One of those mistakes was to commit to project targets that I didn't believe could be met. The net result was that I created problems for myself and my organization.

I finally learned my lesson. My last project was to develop a communications receiver for a shipboard application. My team and I spent some time estimating what we thought it would cost and how long it would take to develop the product, given the resources we were being given. When I presented our estimates to the vice president of engineering, he was in shock. "If it's going to cost that much to develop it," he said, "I'll have to get out of this business, because I won't be able to achieve the return on investment (ROI) that the company requires." He insisted that I should be able to develop the product for less than my estimate.

I showed him how we had arrived at the figures. I was able to defend them with sound arguments, but he still insisted that I had to do the job for less. Finally I said to him, "If you are convinced that the job can be done for less, you'll have to find another project manager. I won't commit to a lower number."

When I said that, he said, "Okay, if you're convinced of your numbers, I'll have to get the company to let me go for a lower ROI." He was able to do that, and we developed the product, coming in fairly close to my estimates.

Several years later, the company got out of that market. They could not achieve the kind of ROI figures that they needed to be profitable.

I know that some people think it's brassy to take the position that I took, but I see it as my duty, not as being hard to deal with. It is my JOB to provide senior managers with the best numbers I can so that they can make good business decisions.

Back to Stress
Okay, so what about stress? Well, you can imagine how stressful this situation was for all of us. Even though the vice president seemed to accept my estimate, he really didn't internalize it. So throughout the project, he put huge pressure on us to get the job done faster and cheaper.
So what do you do about such no-win situations? Well, you always have four choices in a bad situation. They are:

1. Change the situation.
2. Change how you feel about it.
3. Leave
4. Status quo.

By all means the first choice is the best one--if you can make it happen. However, in this situation, there was nothing I could do to change the vice president's attitude and behavior. I tried, but was unsuccessful.

The second choice is to not let the situation bother you. If you can really do that, it is an acceptable response, but you must really not let it bother you, rather than simply denying your feelings.
The third response is one that a lot of us are unwilling to take. It turns out that there is always a threshold of stress below which you will stay in a bad situation. You have to go over that threshold before you will actually leave the situation--whether it be a bad job, bad relationship, or bad neighborhood. Perhaps the fear of the unknown is greater than the pain of the known situation.
Finally, the fourth response is what I call the status quo choice. This means that you stay in the bad situation for an extended time without being able to change how you feel about it or change the situation itself. This choice will eventually take its toll on you, as I have already said. Again, you owe it yourself not to do this for very long. In my case, I stayed long enough to get my Master's degree in psychology, then went into business for myself and evenutally finished my doctorate. But what kept me going was knowing that I had an exit strategy.

Warm regards until next time.
Jim
(c) 2009 by James P. Lewis