Bad PM-habits: #1 the post men

I have been an avid project manager my entire career. And I had the chance to work with different companies, teams and managers. Here I would like to share my personal experiences

Young colleagues who have not yet internalized the term “project manager” often act as postmen. For example they go to a specialist and take the result of a bad test report — and for me it seems they push the “record” button in this moment and record everything the guy told you in the moment.

“OK, understand….problem at test with….delay of 3 weeks…got it”

Then same days later they want to report the delay of 3 weeks to the managment. So they push the “play” button. So they explain everything as the specialist told them, line by line — and here the things go wrong.
And the first questions appear like “why it happend?” and “don’t understand this detail, can you explain?” followed by louder questions “why 3 weeks, where we can catch up?”. The answers of the project manager most are thin “I have to ask….sorry I don’t know this detail….yes you are right maybe”

So the complete report of a serious project situation is crashed and you are grilled. This is bad for your project and bad for your carrer — because the expectation of your role is different.
You are an project manager — not a post men. So you have to

• Understand the problem — don’t know every detail but understand what’s happend is necessary. Quote by the famous Einstein in German “Wenn du es nicht einfach erklären kannst, hast du es nicht richtig verstanden” which means translate something like “If you don’t can explain some complicate topic easy yourself you don’t get the point”.
• Organize a backup specialist — Some many times I asked the specialist if he can attend the meeting if some detailed questions appear. That’s nothing negative, as project manager you can’t have the knowledge of every specialist on your team
• Take the manager job — the expectation of you role is understanding the problem in the project context. That means taking this problem and the possible 3 weeks delay and understand if other processes affected and shorten the 3 weeks. And trust me usually is always are shortcut possible like weekend works, prioritization or external support. If the management understand you take this risk and worked with it your job it completed

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