My focus in this series is not only about ambiguity, but about how people respond to ambiguity and impact themselves and those around them. Those impacted could be colleagues, family or friends. As a leader, your ability to bring clarity to chaos is one of the single most important skills you can possess. So far, we’ve looked at three personas:.

• Part 1 introduced Aaron the Avoider
• Part 2 introduced Brett the Broadcaster
• Part 3 introduced Cal the Complicator

Now we meet Diane the Driver.

Diane was a seasoned PM known for her discipline to keep project teams and stakeholders focused through successful completion. Her latest project was to implement a new company-wide HR system. Dave was a new hire and was staffed on the project as a product manager.

Dave did a great job of building relationships with the business users. Diane was under mandate to hold the schedule firm, which meant she had to keep scope to plan of record to ensure she met her date. Everything was going well into user acceptance testing. During UAT, Jeff, one of the business users raised two “small” enhancements that were previously deemed as out of scope with Dave.

Read more at ProjectManagement.com.

“Oh brother, Moe is on the meeting invite,” Sue said to herself as she prepped for the meeting.
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Moe has been at the company for 40 years and considers himself the fountain of knowledge for how things should be done. Even though a lot in the industry has changed over the years, Moe loves to tell stories about “the good old days” and how so much of what the company is trying to do can’t work. “Those idiot suits on the 40th floor . . .” is one of Moe’s go-to quotes, explaining his view that leadership doesn’t have a clue as to how to run the company. Moe can easily take up ten minutes in a one-hour meeting justifying why a new idea won’t work, based on an irrelevant old war story which typically ends with, “If they just listened to me . . . .” Some team members try to be polite, and others try to shut down Moe’s bluster. Moe’s credibility, once well-regarded in the company, is now in the toilet. Despite his attempts to demonstrate relevancy, he’s simply viewed as a pontificator. 

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. 

As I covered in Part 1 of this series, one of my previous employers utilized a methodology to help its employees assess skill strengths and opportunities for improvement. The methodology contained a broad set of core competencies. My favorite core competency was dealing with ambiguity.

My focus in this series is 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. Those impacted could be colleagues, family, friends, or loved ones.

As a leader, your ability to bring clarity to chaos is one of the single most important skills you can possess.
Part introduced Aaron the Avoider. Now let’s meet Brett the Broadcaster.

“We’ve got to embed AI in everything we do!” Corrie, the CEO, made this announcement at their latest company meeting. “Our competitors are doing it and our customers expect it. If we are going to not just survive but thrive as long-term players, we’ve got to take this seriously. If ever there was an executive mandate, this is it!”

Brett sat in the audience, puzzled. He’d used AI to help him write emails, but that was about as far as he took it. “I’ve got no idea what I’m supposed to do with that,” he thought.

After the company meeting, nearly every discussion between Brett and others included, “I’ve got no idea what Corrie expects us to do!” He rationalized it away as management speak. “The execs don’t really understand what we do; they need to give some concrete actions on what they expect.”

Read more at ProjectManagement.com.