Why do you have a project manager discussing technical solutions? That’s kind of… very wrong. Most PMs nowadays have a just a slightly better technical background than a secretary…
A project manager has responsibility for delivery of a project but they typically lack domain specific knowledge. As a result they can’t directly deliver something, merely ask subject matter experts for advice and facilitate a team to deliver.
Most PM’s cope with the stress of this position poorly.
This cartoon is an example of micro management (a common coping mechanisim), the manager has involved themselves in the low level decisions because that gives a sense of control. If a technical team then tell them its a bad decison the team are effectively attacking their coping mechanisim.
The solution isn’t to tell them their technical idea is terrible, when you’ve fallen down this rabbit hole you have to treat the PM as a stakeholder. They are someone you have to manage, so a common solution is to give them confidence there is a path to delivery, a way to track and understand it.
Best practice is to clearly state that PM here is not competent for its job, either he finds a solution himself (e.g. he manages expectations of clients without admitting he fucked up) or he has to be replaced.
This kind of situation is very dangerous. PM shouldn’t take similar decisions, nor promising anything
Management normally defines ways to track and judge itself, these are typically called Key Performance Indicators.
KPI’s are normally things like contract value growth, new contracts signed, profit margin, etc…
So if the project manager is meeting or exceeding their KPI’s and you walk up to their boss telling them the PM is failing as basic job functions, the boss won’t care.
This is because the boss might have set the KPI’s or the boss might also be judged on them. In either situation its to the bosses advantage to ignore you.
The boss will only care if there is a KPI you can demonstrate the PM failing to meet.
Every person/group will have various incentives and motivations. To affect change you have to understand what they are.
Not even a pure mckinsey type of company value kpis over stakeholders’ feedbacks. If a company is purely kpi driven, it is a bad company, as kpi cannot catch everything, but have limited and specific scope. Your managers should go back to their MBAs, and revise their stakeholder management skills. If a manager get a feedback that one of their team members is jeopardizing a project and the relationship with clients due to taking responsibilities and tasks for which they have no competency, it is extremely bad. In this case is even proved by the fact that the company must spend resources lowering the clients expectations. Managers should absolutely act. If this doesn’t happen, the managerial side of your company is pretty broken
Yes the problem is that they are management. You can say they are shitty managers all you want, but the only result you’ll get is that they will fire you.
Why do you have a project manager discussing technical solutions? That’s kind of… very wrong. Most PMs nowadays have a just a slightly better technical background than a secretary…
A project manager has responsibility for delivery of a project but they typically lack domain specific knowledge. As a result they can’t directly deliver something, merely ask subject matter experts for advice and facilitate a team to deliver.
Most PM’s cope with the stress of this position poorly.
This cartoon is an example of micro management (a common coping mechanisim), the manager has involved themselves in the low level decisions because that gives a sense of control. If a technical team then tell them its a bad decison the team are effectively attacking their coping mechanisim.
The solution isn’t to tell them their technical idea is terrible, when you’ve fallen down this rabbit hole you have to treat the PM as a stakeholder. They are someone you have to manage, so a common solution is to give them confidence there is a path to delivery, a way to track and understand it.
Best practice is to clearly state that PM here is not competent for its job, either he finds a solution himself (e.g. he manages expectations of clients without admitting he fucked up) or he has to be replaced.
This kind of situation is very dangerous. PM shouldn’t take similar decisions, nor promising anything
This advice isn’t grounded in reality.
Management normally defines ways to track and judge itself, these are typically called Key Performance Indicators.
KPI’s are normally things like contract value growth, new contracts signed, profit margin, etc…
So if the project manager is meeting or exceeding their KPI’s and you walk up to their boss telling them the PM is failing as basic job functions, the boss won’t care.
This is because the boss might have set the KPI’s or the boss might also be judged on them. In either situation its to the bosses advantage to ignore you.
The boss will only care if there is a KPI you can demonstrate the PM failing to meet.
Every person/group will have various incentives and motivations. To affect change you have to understand what they are.
Not even a pure mckinsey type of company value kpis over stakeholders’ feedbacks. If a company is purely kpi driven, it is a bad company, as kpi cannot catch everything, but have limited and specific scope. Your managers should go back to their MBAs, and revise their stakeholder management skills. If a manager get a feedback that one of their team members is jeopardizing a project and the relationship with clients due to taking responsibilities and tasks for which they have no competency, it is extremely bad. In this case is even proved by the fact that the company must spend resources lowering the clients expectations. Managers should absolutely act. If this doesn’t happen, the managerial side of your company is pretty broken
Yes the problem is that they are management. You can say they are shitty managers all you want, but the only result you’ll get is that they will fire you.