Why people Hate Project Managers – A must read for would-be managers
"Project Managers" are inevitable. Love them or hate them, but if you are in a project, you have to accept them. They are Omnipresent in any project. They intervene too much on technical things without much knowledge. They create unrealistic targets and nonsensical methods of achieving them. And they invariably fail to acknowledge the individual hard work. Are they of any use?
In a recent online survey by amplicate.com, 51% of the participants expressed hate for project managers and project management. Look around yourself in your office, the scenario is probably the same. So what are the reasons that make people hate their project managers? DWBIConcepts delved deeper into this question and found out top 5 reasons about why project managers are hated.
Remember, all project managers are not hated! So, following reasons off course don’t apply to them.
1. Project managers are lazy
Generally project managers are not answerable to their subordinates. They are self-paced and semi autocratic. These allowances provide them the opportunity to spend time lazily. Many project managers spend more time surfing internet than evaluating the performances of his/her subordinates.
The cure for their laziness is pro-activeness which can help them spend quality time in office.
2. Project Managers snatch other people’s credit
I know of a project manager “Harry” (name changed), who used to receive work from client and assign the work to his subordinate “John” and once John finished the work and sent Harry an email, Harry used to copy the contents of John’s mail and reply back to the client. Since Harry never “forwarded” John’s mail directly to client – so client was always oblivion to the actual person (John) doing their work. Client always used to send appreciation mail to Harry only and John was never accredited for the work he did.
The advice for the would-be project managers here is to remain conscious about the individual contributions and give them their due credit whenever possible.
3. Project managers are reluctant to listen to new idea
There is no one-size-fit-all solution when it comes to project management. Just because a specific idea worked in your earlier project, doesn’t mean that will work in your next project also. Everybody is good at something or other. Everybody has some idea. Not all of them are good. But some of them are. So be flexible and open to new ideas.
Listen carefully what others have to say and if you have to discard them, give proper reasons.
4. Project Managers fail to do realistic planning
Proper planning makes thing easy. What do you think is the main difference between a NASA space project and a service industry IT project? The project members in that NASA project are the same kind of engineers that you have in your project. May be many of them passed from the same graduate school. The same set of people who made one project a marvellous success, fail miserably in some other project. There is nothing wrong with those people. But there is something wrong with the leader leading that set of people. A NASA project succeeds because of a meticulous and realistic planning whereas the other project slogs.
Create a detail plan and follow it closely.
5. Project Managers don't know the technology well
Don’t let new tools and technologies outsmart you. Technology space is ever changing. Try to keep pace with that.
Install the software and tools that are being used in your project in your laptop. Play with them. Know what their features are and what their limitations are. Read blogs on them. Start your own blog and write something interesting in that in a regular basis. Be a savvy. Otherwise you will be fooled by your own people.
