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One of the founding fathers of project management chides those looking for a fast way up the corporate ladder, bashes the conventional PMO model, explains why you shouldn’t ask for permission, and extols the virtues of always finishing what you start.
What can an octogenarian who retired from the field in 1987 share with today’s project leaders to make them more efficient and effective on the job? First and foremost, you don’t start something you can’t finish. In his 20-plus-year run as a project manager, Eric Jenett claims to never have started a project he didn’t see personally through to completion. That closer’s mentality served Jenett well during a career that began before the formal field of project management existed, included his co-founding of the Project Management Institute, and culminated with the PMI Project Management Excellence Award that bears his name.
A recent conversation with ProjectsAtWork.com began with Jenett talking about spending the Saturdays of his retirement “futzing around” in the hardware store, but quickly picked up steam. Before the conversation ended, the 82-year-old Jenett exhibited the determination and candor that made him successful, expressing disdain for those who view project management solely as a way up the corporate ladder, bashing the Project Management Office concept, and explaining the riddle of why good project managers are like donkeys — with wings.
Just what one would expect from a strong closer.
How has the field most noticeably changed since you moved to the sidelines?
A lot of people now look at project management as a stop along their career path, but not the final destination. If projects are going to be effective and efficient, project managers are going to have to forget about moving up to other managerial positions. To me, being effective as a project manager and moving up in the company are two goals that are totally inconsistent. People moving up and out of the field prevent project management from really becoming a profession.
So if you discourage project managers from looking at their job as a springboard to propel themselves up the org chart, how should they look at it?
To be effective, project managers need to be satisfied with their careers as project managers. Increasing responsibility, I am all for. But I do not think that it is a good training ground for upper managers. This is because a project basically has its death sentence declared when it starts.
Can you describe this “death sentence” concept further?
If you are a good project manager, you recognize at the start of every project that your death sentence has been declared because your job, quite literally, is to work yourself out of a job as fast and as economically as you can. If you take that “death sentence” mindset into other areas of a company’s activities and operations, it will likely be a disaster. I don’t think it’s at all useful to try to run an entire company as a project. For, if it really is run that way, its death sentence is renewed every single day — and should be one day closer. I would hate to imagine a company that has its death sentence declared when it starts.
What other attributes do good project managers possess?
A good project manager has fire in the belly. You really need to have a passion for doing it, for being beat over the head, for being frustrated and castigated. You need to be able to get your “kicks” out of the project’s execution and results, which may not include the product of the project.
On top of that, every project in every field is easier if you realize that it is more effective to get excused than it is to get permission. Permission means you are uncertain, and that means it has to go up the organization and each person who has to approve your permission is a little more uncertain than the one below him because each one is farther away from the project. That leads to people saying, “If my person managing the project is uncertain, I really don’t want to put my career and my backend on the line. Maybe I should pass it up to someone else to approve.” And as each “maybe” thought arises, the project schedule suffers and inevitably the cost goes up.
Where do project managers get themselves into the most trouble?
Scope. The absolutely critical requirement and obligation of a project manager is to have a good scope. Some project managers expect to get a scope from the client that they can modify through change order, but very few project managers actually get that from the client. So it is their obligation to develop that scope and get client approval on it.
Another way good people get themselves into trouble is by trying to be all things to all people. [PMI co-founder and author] Russ Archibald used to promote the concept of project management being like a relay race, with the baton of project management being passed on as the project execution goes through the stages of its life. Some people are good openers, some people are good doers and some people are good closers. That’s not a bad idea to consider, especially when you are managing a long and difficult project.
You are outspoken in your criticism of how the PMO concept is executed. What are organizations doing wrong?
The PMO is a half-baked idea. It needs much more thought as to its mission, its intended life span and a good bit of useful fleshing out. The way many define it, it is a training-teaching-standards-data-collection-wet-nursing job. You should staff it with the most effective people possible. And you assign them to dead-end clerical work such as collection and training and so forth? It is very difficult to find competent people that have the fire in their belly who want to do that kind of thing. I feel very strongly that the PMO should be staffed at the manager and leader level with older, near-retirement, hardened and toughened project managers. They know the ropes, they are not likely to be preoccupied with their next step up, they know the politics of project management and they likely would have the respect of the company’s project managers. Staffed like that, the PMO can serve as a very effective acculturation assignment for new project managers as they get exposed to heavy and varied doses of the company culture and way of doing things. It should not be an assignment for training or acculturation of trainers, HR folks, statisticians, standards development experts, etc.
The most effective project management offices are the ones that get the project managers who are near retirement to work for them. They have no axe to grind, they know how to work around the politics, they have the experience, and they have the respect of the upcoming project managers. The operation of a PMO — the flame that burns in it — should be one of experience, not training nor setting up the job as largely observation and data collection and methods development.
How did it feel to have the PMI Project Management Excellence Award named after you?
It made me feel pretty good, particularly the nature of the type of person it is designed to recognize. It is for someone who contributes to the profession by example, not somebody who uses corporate resources well.
Is the award your proudest career accomplishment?
I have always felt that a project manager is the project. With that in mind, my proudest accomplishment is that I never started a project that I did not personally see through to completion.
When someone from outside the field asks you what you did for a living, how do you respond?
One of the best descriptions I’ve heard is that most of the time as a project manager you’re a donkey that is about to be pulled over a cliff. You dig in your feet to resist going over until the very last minute when it is obvious that whatever it is you are resisting is going to take you with it. Then you go over the cliff and develop wings.
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