Ambiguity Personas (Part 3): Cal the Complicator

My focus in this article series is not only about ambiguity, but about how people respond to ambiguity and impact themselves and those around them. It’s not limited to a person’s professional life; ambiguity can manifest itself in virtually any aspect of a person’s life. Part 1 introduced Aaron the Avoider, while in Part 2 we met Brett the Broadcaster. The next persona is Cal the Complicator.

Mary was just hired as Conset’s new CIO. Mary brought a long list of achievements with her, having worked in and with some of the largest companies on earth. She was also known as someone not afraid to make changes to improve an organization’s performance. Her courage didn’t mean she was reckless in her execution. Her execution was thoughtful, measured and well-informed.

Conset’s IT organization was divided by discipline, with product managers, program managers, engineering, and support all reporting up to different VPs. One of Mary’s first acts was to consolidate program and product management under one VP and merge the organizations.

Under the prior CIO, the two organizations didn’t work particularly well together, with the two regularly pointing fingers at each other whenever problems occurred. Mary then held the VP under the combined organization accountable for how she wanted it structured, with the plan to be revealed at a later date.

Cal was a program manager accountable for Conset’s sales and marketing IT systems. He was very comfortable with the product/program organizational split. For him, combining the organizations under one VP with details to be released later was very unsettling.

Read more at ProjectManagement.com. 

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