Years back, I worked on a large, high-visibility program. My direct boss was generally well respected by senior leadership for his client management abilities and how well he communicated upward. He scheduled a weekly two-hour staff meeting with his direct reports.

Most times, my peers and I would sit in the meeting waiting for our boss to show up, with him either coming in more than an hour late or not at all. There was always some excuse as to why he couldn’t meet. We had a running joke about what time our boss would show. It was frustrating that we seemed to not matter much to him, particularly on such a high-visibility program.

This behavior was in direct contrast to our boss’s boss, the executive in charge of the entire program. If he made time for you to meet with him, he kept it. If you were late or didn’t show, he let you know about it. In the rare event that he did need to cancel, his assistant would contact you with not just a cancellation but alternate times that he was able to meet. He treated both his and others’ time with respect.

The experiences with my direct and skip-level bosses left a very significant impression on me. Both worked on the same program, yet the one who had the greater span of control also had a much better command of his calendar and demonstrated more respect for others than my direct boss did. Seeing how the two worked together showed me what I did not want to be known as:

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For the past year, I have been coaching a high-potential leader. Over the past few months, we have been talking about the concept of a pro forma resume. This is a resume you would like to have in the future, which allows you to chart your career movement and experiences to make the pro forma resume a reality.

In this leader’s case, we have been talking about what he wants his resume to look like in 10 years. His pro forma has given him a north star to strive for in his career and is providing a roadmap to help him get there. In a recent meeting, he brought up a benefit of the pro forma that I hadn’t considered, but one that makes perfect sense.
He is currently leading a particularly complex project involving both employees and volunteers, and has exposure at the very highest levels of the organization. The work is particularly stressful, and he is facing a number of new challenges.

In our meeting, he was feeling a bit overwhelmed and stressed due to the project and its issues. As we talked about the project, he made an interesting observation. “You know,” he said, “there are a lot of tough things I’m working through, but knowing I can include some of these things on my resume is really going to enhance my marketability.”

His comment caught me off guard, not because it was in any way wrong (in fact it was a brilliant observation), but because I had never articulated like he did the link between navigating thorny issues and how they enhance a resume. He later told me that the idea of having a more robust resume as result of the project and its challenges energizes him to address the issues head on.

Now that’s a “making lemonade out of lemons” perspective.

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One of my favorite movies is A Few Good Men. The riveting court scene at the end of the movie where Lt. Daniel Kaffee (played by Tom Cruise) is questioning Col. Nathan R. Jessep (played by Jack Nicholson) ranks right up there with some of my favorite movie scenes. “You can’t handle the truth!” and “Did you order the code red?” are lines that could be said in just about any venue or context, and someone will likely tie the line to the movie.

In another scene, Jessep is explaining to Kaffee that, “We follow orders or people die, it’s that simple. Are we clear?” Jessep then underscores, “Are we clear?” to which Kaffee responds, “Crystal.” The scene intensifies in its back-and-forth dialogue until Jessep…actually I won’t spoil it for anyone who hasn’t seen the movie.

The ”Are we clear”? line has stuck with me over the years. Aside from it being powerful theatrics, it’s something that I believe is a foundational tenet of what we as PMs are all about.

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Some time back I was responsible for a portfolio of projects being done within the finance organization of my company.  One of the projects was outsourced to a large consulting firm who supplied the project management, analysis, and development resources to the project.  I would hold weekly meetings with the project manager who consistently gave me a "thumbs up" on the project up to the first key milestone being hit.  When the week of the first milestone approached, he announced that the milestone was going to have to slip by a week to ensure successful delivery.  The next week came along and again the project slipped a week.  This went on for two more weeks with the promise of "we'll for sure nail it next week."  I decided to do some crawling around the project to assess where the project was really at.  Turns out we were at least a month away from delivering to the milestone which was already a month late.