I’m going to leverage one more story about my daughter, because it clearly illustrates a problem my wife and I could have avoided had we not been so intent at placing our own interpretation and ‘knowledge’ on the situation.

She must have been about two when this started.  She’d come to us a little frightened and start to explain what was bothering her.  She kept repeating the word ‘because’ and we naturally asked, ‘Because what?’  The short version is that my wife finally figured out she was saying ‘big claws’ and this was a result of some nightmare.  It wasn’t the two of us who did the deducing … instead my daughter (obviously frustrated with her idiot parents) used a different word.  She said ‘fingernails’ instead … and the barrier was broken.

For some time, I’ve been reading and commenting on professional social network posts that offer a rather naïve thought I can sum up as follows …

‘Because I have this [insert professional cert here] I am now qualified to [do whatever the cert claims to support].’

Oh the danger of what I don’t know, especially when it comes to running my projects.  Many of these conversations centered on project management certifications and then branched from there.  The one that really motivated me to write this post asked what a great technical project manager should do when he has difficulty actually managing the people.  I was brash enough to suggest that perhaps the person should move on to follow a more technical track and leave the PM work to the ones who have a handle on the right soft skills to manage people and processes effectively.  Many echoed that thought, though some said soft skills training might be in order

THE CRITICAL ISSUE
And here’s where the risk comes in from my point of view.  What if that particular PM has no clue that he or she doesn’t have the right soft skills?  What if (and I’ve seen this happen many times), the PM and everybody around are pretty much clueless to what they don’t know?

Projects often fail not because of the lack of a great technical team.  They fail because nobody was minding the relationships and people.  They fail because the project manager got his job based on longevity or some other aspect – not because the organization employs professional project managers.

There is room for so many skills on a project team.  We need highly technical people who know their stuff and deliver results.  But we also need project managers who focus on the management aspects – even if they aren’t the font of all technical knowledge.  Frankly, I’d rather the PM’s keep out of that area and focus on recognizing their own project management knowledge gaps and then filling them.  Not all companies are willing to support that effort … but the profession sure would advance faster if more of them did.

FINAL THOUGHT
So, the next time you think somebody just said ‘because’, keep asking what they mean and don’t assume.  They might be thinking of ‘fingernails.’

Bio:

Mark Moore has held multiple professional positions in IT and business for nearly three decades serving organizations both small and large, public and private.  With over half that time as a project manager, he has successfully managed major initiatives spanning multiple years with a cost of over $3 Million and teams of over 250 people.  He has been a Project Management Professional since 2002, served as President of the PMI Western Michigan Chapter, and presented at multiple NCPMI Annual Events.  Mark holds a Masters of Education degree from Colorado State University with a concentration in Adult Education and Training.  He is an experienced writer, speaker and presenter on project management and team building topics.  Mark is the Principal Consultant for Broken Arrow Associates, LTD.  He and his family live in a rural area outside of Raleigh, North Carolina.

To contact Mark for opportunities or questions, send an e-mail to info@baa-ltd.com.