Strategies for Managing Change — the Project Manager
Posted by business | management | Posted on April 25th, 2010
Introduction
The title of project manager (PM) is used to mean different things in different companies. Fortunately there is a standards body called the Project Management Institute which provides excellent guidance around the role and function of a project manager.
Some will disagree, but I don’t care if your project manager is PMI certified or not. You need to care about having a project manager with the skill to carry out the role as the Institute defines it. It’s your change management strategy, and it’s your reputation on the line.
Finding a Project Manager
Do you need a certified Project Management Professional (PMP)? As I said above, I don’t care. There are newly certified PMP’s who have taken their tests and gotten the certification, but they may not be battle tested. There are veteran project managers who never got the fancy title, but they know how to manage projects. And there is everything in between. The track record is what you need to care about.
Do you have a strong PM on your team now? Is that person well respected, perhaps a key opinion leader in your organization? Do they treat project management as a profession? Then by all means use them.
If, on the other hand, project manager has been a title used by junior, untrained people who walk around with a task list and a clip board, it’s time to bring on stronger talent.
Your fastest route to a proven project manager will be a contract hire, either from a reputable firm or an independent. There are many good ones out there. Get and check references, and interview at least three. Let your key opinion leaders and managers interview them as well. Look for their track record and for good chemistry.
Set the Project Manager Up for Success
Simply put, everyone needs to understand that the project manager is your alter ego. Everyone includes you.
Your managers and project leaders must understand that they are accountable to the PM for providing all of their tasks, their dependencies on other tasks and other work units, their schedule commitments, and their resource requirements.
They need to understand that the PM will review all of their information and look for problems. These could include missed tasks, schedule inconsistencies, resource overloads, etc. Often managers will tell the PM that they can handle some of these problems, by working people longer hours or by overlapping some tasks “by a day or two”. A good project manager is going to challenge such claims, and you’ll need to stand behind the PM.
The PM is going to hold everyone accountable for milestone deliverables. In most projects, especially those that are complex, milestones are missed and contingency plans must be activated. Again, you as the leader need to support the PM as they hold people accountable.
Handling Conflicts
It’s entirely possible that the PM will have conflicts with managers, team leads or others in the organization. Make it safe for people to discuss and bring up such conflicts. Just because the PM is your alter ego doesn’t make them right — any more than you are always right.
Engage your key opinion leaders along with the project manager and others. Find out the facts contributing to the conflict, and make the decisions necessary to get the change management strategy back on track.
Change management strategies that fail often do so because of poor project management. Don’t let that happen to you.
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Can I make a small suggestion?
Repeat the last few seconds of your previous videos with the next one…
It’s really hard to figure out what’s going on…Especially when you have to wait for the video to load, and you forgot how the last video ended…
Thanks~
so saving the climate will let us survive without having to do major ass adaption, a low carbon economy will create more jobs and help us get out of the recession and we will be leaving a healthier, more intact planet to future generations! is that bad?!
A friend of mine used to do a lot of that stuff (viral campaigns/web design/web analytics/general marketing meetings) and his job title was E-Marketing consultant.
In my experience, adding consultant to a job title implies you don't know what to call it or that the job will have some turnover/short-term employment associated to it. I wouldn't get too hung up on job title as long as you're getting paid what you think is a fair amount for the work you do.
It's too wordy. You need to put this resume on a serious diet
Wording is well done.
The order of events i'd change.
The employer is going to look for WHO You have worked for first and what you did there first and foremost.
Profile can go to the bottom its fluff.
Fancy up your degree. Degree is important now-a-days. (Bachelor of Science (BS): Sales and Marketing Management Degree … or whatever)
Don't mention GPA, you didn't but just fyi
I have created a simple, but useful page, which has all the links to this series of videos listed in the correct order.
The site name is of the standard format with the usual (US) extension after the dot. The site name is then followed by a forward slash and the name of the page, so the first word is my site name and the second bit is the page name (but you need to put D O T h t m on the end).
pharmgateway howitallends
i have something else to add:
is it bad to conserve resources for future generations? even if global warming isn’t real, why should we leave a polluted, resourceless hunk of rock for our kids? climate change is real, (and we have solid, real proof that we are causing it), so we should have some moral and ethical considerations to save the huge amount of species here on earth, BUT we should think about our own KIDS.
Not for nothing but the current growth in GDP is ~2.9% which would mean a total halt in economic growth.. During the Great Depression there was stagnant growth of around 1.7% (3% is $2.7 Trillion)
Also its no Jedi Mind Trick.. the columns represent the certainties… the rows are the variables.. which is why the economic harm is a certainty and global warming is still a variable.
You should know that.
he outright says it would. did you watch the video?
The columns represents action or inaction.. the rows represent the uncertainty of the debate “Alarmists being right or skeptics being right.”
Essentially Action is buying insurance, inaction opting out of insurance. Global Warming is the reason your making a choice to buy insurance or not..
The economic harm is the cost of the insurance.. The only Jedi Mind Trick is Greg implying that it wouldn’t cost money for insurance.
Both exist in columns and rows, not one or the other.
and yes it is.
you know the earth is warming when people living in the Caribbean start complaining about the heat. and people in new york are actually glad when it gets warmer. record breaking temperatures