Definitions of Management
One common definition of management is that a manager gets work done by other people. Only a bit of thought is needed to realize how useless this definition is. Dictators get work done by other people, but I wouldn’t call that management. Dr. Peter Drucker, who many credit with being the “father” of management, because he first made people realize that management was a profession, rather than a job, has written that a manager is supposed to make an unsolicited contribution to the organization (Drucker, 1973). That is, a manager looks around to see what needs to be done to advance the cause of the organization and does it without asking permission or having to be told to do it. This is often called pro-active, as opposed to reactive, and it is.
But most importantly, a manager can’t do this unless she understands the mission and vision for the organization, and takes initiative to help achieve these. And I believe this applies equally well to project managers. They must understand the mission and vision of the organization first, then they must see how the project they are managing meshes with the organization’s mission, and they must steer the project to ensure that the interests of the organization are met.
Project managers must understand the mission and vision of the organization first, then they must see how the project they are managing meshes with the organization’s mission, and they must steer the project to ensure that the interests of the organization are met.
It’s About People!
In addition, I said above that the job is not a technical job. It is about getting people to perform work that must be done to meet the objectives of the project. In that respect, the classical definition is correct, but Drucker has pointed out that the manager must get people to perform above the minimum acceptable performance level. The reason is that this minimum level is the survival level for the organization, and any company that just manages to survive will not do so for long. Eventually their competition will pass them and the organization will die.
So the first skills that a project manager needs are people skills. Herein lies the source of major problems for many project managers—and general managers too, for that matter. I have found that most managers know more about getting performance from computers, machines, and money than they do about getting people to perform. There are many reasons for this, but chief among them is that nobody has ever taught them practical methods for dealing with people, and we simply aren’t born knowing how. So far as I know, the geneticists have not yet found a people-skills gene that would endow a person with these.
Furthermore, many project managers who have strong technical backgrounds find it difficult to deal with people effectively. They are “things-oriented,” not people-oriented, and some will even go so far as to say that they hate this aspect of the job. My recommendation is that they forget about being project managers if this is true. You usually aren’t very effective at something you hate doing, but beyond that, why spend your life doing something you hate?
The Working Project Manager
In fact, one of the biggest traps for project managers is to be what is euphemistically called a working project manager. This means that the project manager is indeed responsible for performing technical work in addition to managing the job. The problem with this is that when there is a conflict between managing and doing work—and there always is such a conflict—the work will take priority and the managing will be neglected. However, when it comes time for the manager’s performance appraisal, he will be told that his technical work was okay, but the managing was inadequate. This is a double-bind that should not exist.
Authority
The universal complaint from project managers is that they have a lot of responsibility but no authority. It is true, and it is not likely to change. It is the nature of the job, I’m afraid. However, you can’t delegate responsibility without giving a person the authority commensurate with the responsibility you want him to take, so while the project manager’s authority might be limited, it cannot be zero.
A word to project managers, however. I learned early in my career as an engineer that you have as much authority as you are willing to take. I know that sounds strange. We see authority as something granted to us by the organization, but it turns out that those individuals who take authority for granted usually get it officially. Of course I am not advocating that you violate any of the policies of the organization. That is not a proper use of authority. But when it comes to making decisions, rather than checking with your boss to see if something is okay, make the decision yourself, take action that is appropriate and does not violate policy, and then inform your boss what you have done. Many managers have told me that they wish their people would quit placing all decisions on their shoulders to make. And they wish their people would bring them solutions, rather than problems. In other words, your boss is looking for you to take some of the load and leave him or her free to do other things.
A Moment of Truth
In 1987 Jan Carlzon published a book entitled, Moments of Truth. Carlzon was the youngest ever CEO of Scandinavian Airlines, and he successfully turned around the ailing airline. He did so in part by empowering all employees to do their jobs without having to ask permission for every action they felt they should take to meet customer needs. He pointed out that every interaction between an employee and a customer was a moment of truth in which the customer would evaluate the airline’s service. If that service was good, then they would be likely to fly SAS again and, conversely, if it wasn’t good, they would be less likely to do so. As Carlzon pointed out, from the customer’s point of view, the SAS employee is the airline.
Furthermore, Carlzon revised the standard organization chart, which is typically a triangle with the CEO at the apex and successive levels of managers cascading down below, eventuating in the front-line employees at the very bottom. This implies that there is more and more authority as you go from the bottom toward the apex at the top, and that the people at the lowest level have almost no authority at all.
Carlzon simply inverted the triangle, placing the apex at the bottom and the front-line employees at the top. In doing so, he said that the job of managers is to make it possible for the front-line to deliver the services that the customer expects. The manager is an enabler of employees. They are actually servants of employees, not their masters, when you look at it this way.
This is, to me, the essence of the project manager’s role. Since you have very little authority anyway, consider that your job is to ensure that everyone in the project team has what they need to do their job well. If you do, then most of them will perform at appropriate levels.
Since you have very little authority anyway, consider the job to ensure that everyone in the project team has what they need to do their job well.
Leadership and Management
Finally, because the project manager’s job is mostly about dealing with people, it is absolutely essential that you exercise leadership as well as management skills. I have defined management as making an unsolicited contribution to the organization. The definition of leadership that seems to me to best express the meaning of the word is that “Leadership is the art of getting others to want to do something that you believe should be done” (Packard, 1962). The operative word in the definition is want.
As I said previously, dictators get people to do things. Leaders get them to want to do things. There is a big difference. As soon as the dictator turns her back, people quit working. When the leader turns her back, people continue working, because they are working willingly.
Clearly a project manager needs to exercise leadership—since he lacks authority. But most importantly, the dictator can only control people within his or her immediate range of sight. The leader can get people to perform without having to closely supervise them. And this is necessary in projects.
However, a project manager must also exercise management skills. In fact, the two sets of skills must be integrated into the job of project management because management deals with the administrated aspects of the job—budgets, schedules, logistics, and so on—while leadership gets people to perform at optimum levels. If you exercise one set of skills to the exclusion of the other, the outcome will be far less effective than if you integrate the two skill sets.