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The Project Manager Must Be a Master of Paradox

August 2, 2010 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: Project Management Best Practices

The Project Manager Must Be a Master of Paradox
By Richard Morreale

One of the major parts of the Project Management Success Equation (20%SS [Soft Skills] + 80%HS [Hard Skills] + 8S [8 Different Skills] + MOP=Success) is MOP which stands for the Master of Paradox. Let me explain. I believe that truly great Project Managers need to have a ‘big ego’ That’s right, a ‘big ego’. They need to know that they could build anything. I’ve never built a bridge but I know I could. Using the ‘3 Amigos’ principle I would hire the best Civil Engineer and put her in charge of engineering on the Project. I would also hire the best bridge construction Planning Guy around and put him in charge of the Project Support Office.

At the same time that the Project Manager needs to have a ‘big ego’ he also needs to have a very ‘small ego’. That is he needs to be able to give the credit for success to his team. He needs to make sure that the Team that delivered the project successfully gets the accolades for doing so.

He needs to be ‘autocratic’ in the sense that he needs to be a take charge kind of guy. He needs to be able to take actions, that is, to do the task himself when needed to get things done. At the same time, he needs to be a really great ‘delegator’ He needs to remember that he has a team working with him and he is not the only the person on the project that can do things right. He needs to understand that once he has delegated a task to someone on the team he needs to let the delegated person get on with it with minimal involvement.

Not only does he need to be a great ‘manager’, he also needs to be a great ‘leader’. The ‘leader’ decides the direction the team should be moving through the jungle and ensures that the team is motivated to travel through the jungle. Let’s go north! While the ‘manager’ sorts out the work schedule and makes sure that the team knows the direction they are going, that they have a work schedule in place and that they have the necessary tools to clear the jungle in a northerly direction.

The Project Manager needs to be able to deal with the ‘complexity’ of some projects while at the same time must strive to ‘keep it simple’. So many times, project managers have made projects that I audit so complicated unnecessarily. It’s the Project Managers responsibility to make what is being done on the project as clear and understandable as can be and to do away with as much of the complexities as possible. Obviously, some projects are very complex and he must have the intelligence to manage the complex projects. However, at the same time, the project Manager must continually strive to ‘keep it simple’.

The Project Manager must be ‘impatient’, must manage with a sense of urgency and must be impatient to get things done. At the same time the Project Manager must understand that in most cases it takes ‘patience’ to establish the kinds of relationships on the project that will help to make the project successful.

Richard Morreale is a project manager, professional speaker, author and consultant specializing in Project Management, Leadership, Achievement and Customer Service.

You can book Richard for your next meeting or conference at richard@richardmorreale.com or 336 499 6677.

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This entry was posted on Monday, August 2nd, 2010 and is filed under Project Management Best Practices. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

1 person has left a comment

I like how you are saying about the project manager’s role… Yes, it is the challenge to be a project manager who is able to work on complex projects yet keeping them simple.
The formula of Success shown at the beginning of the post was interesting… :)

Thanks for the post.

Eric Morkovich wrote on August 3, 2010 - 3:26 am | Visit Link

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