It was one of the worst meetings in Greg’s project management career.  

“We are slipping by a month,” Greg said to his leader Kavita.

“How long have you known about this?” Kavita asked.

“Um, two weeks. I’ve been working hard to pull it back in but wasn’t able to do.”

“And I’m just finding out about this now? Why didn’t you ask for help?”

Greg stammered. “I thought I could handle it on my own.”

“This is really bad, Greg. We have customers relying on us to deliver on time. Sue, you work with Greg to see where we’re at and see if we can pull this thing back in. Hopefully it’s not worse than a month.”

“Will do, Kavita,” Sue said.

“Good, I need to northwind my management and let them know we may have a problem. Get back to me by end of day with your assessment. Clear?”

“Clear,” Greg said as he looked down, avoiding eye contact with Kavita.

“I’m disappointed you didn’t ask for help,” Kavita said as she left the room.

Asking for help. Something that by nature we know how to do. Whether it’s in the form of a baby crying, a kindergartener needing his shoe tied, or a teenager needing a parent’s help with a flat tire, asking for help is something each and every one of us has experience with. Yet in a professional setting, asking for help can be viewed as a sign of weakness; something that could reflect negatively on a person’s ability to deliver.
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This couldn’t be further from the truth. 

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. 

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.

The two operative words in the phrase are dealing and ambiguity. Dictionary.com defines ambiguity as an unclear, indefinite or equivocal word, expression, or meaning. Pretty ironic that the word ambiguity has a clear meaning.
My focus in this 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.

Those impacted could be colleagues, family, friends or loved ones. I believe that, particularly as a leader or project manager, your ability to bring clarity to chaos is one of the single most important skills you can possess. AI can certainly help you think through ambiguous situations, but it takes the leader/PM to confidently and rationally drive that clarity across affected stakeholders.

To that end, I’d like to highlight five ambiguity personas in this series. This will help you identify where your strengths or opportunities lie so you can be better at dealing with ambiguity.

Meet Aaron the Avoider on ProjectManagement.com. 

“I should have spoken up,” Gil said as he took another bite of his burger. He and his wife, Pat, loved going out to their favorite burger joint on Wednesday nights for their two-for-one hamburger specials. Gil told Pat how he had sat through a three-hour meeting where his work team wrestled through a nasty problem. Gil had come up with an idea an hour into the meeting but never spoke up. Someone else came up with the same idea two hours later, which was supported not only by Gil’s boss but the other team members.

“This isn’t the first time,” Pat said. She and Gil had been married for ten years and she knew him inside and out. She not only knew his strengths, but also his weaknesses.

“I know, I just don’t like to monopolize a meeting,” Gil said.

“I think you’ve got a long way to go before that happens,” Pat said as she popped a French fry in her mouth.

“What do you mean?”

“If you do this, you’ll definitely increase revenue,” Mark said. Mark was a brash young consultant out to make a name for himself on his first consulting gig since graduating with an MBA. The client, Paula, was an experienced sales manager. She patiently listened to Mark’s presentation filled with consultant-speak and tired cliches. It was the “definitely increase revenue” claim that got her to chime in.

“Increasing revenue is always a great thing. Tell me, Mark, where have you done this before?” Paula asked.

“Well, our firm has done this with a lot of clients.”

“That may be true, but you’re pitching me on work that you specifically would be doing for us. I’m curious as to where you’ve specifically succeeded with a project like this and your experience with increasing revenue. Where have you done this before?”

Mark stammered for an answer. “I would have a team working with me that has the experience to deliver.”

“Mark, I’ve been around the block a lot and can tell when someone isn’t being up-front with me. You’ve never done a project like this before, have you?”

“Well, yeah; when working on my MBA we did a case study on this. I’m confident I can do the work and deliver results for you, Paula.”

Paula smiled politely. “Very good, Mark; let me think about it, OK?”

“Certainly. Can I call you next week?” Mark asked.

“I’ll be out, but I’ll give you a ring if we decide to pursue further. Thanks, Mark.”

Paula got up from her chair, shook hands with Mark and led him out of the office.

“Sheesh, what a poser,” Paula thought as she walked back to her desk, knowing she would not be calling Mark back.