3 ms·

The surprising thing about project managers who use the phrase "when-will-it-be-done" far too much is that they're often willing to help you with getting resour

The surprising thing about project managers who use the phrase "when-will-it-be-done" far too much is that they're often willing to help you with getting resources and getting help/cooperation "across silos" if you ask them in the right way. They want the project to progress. Desperately. From their point of view they're often powerless people surrounded by line workers that don't want to interact with them, yet they're somehow responsible for the success of the project. They're acutely aware that the meetings are often pointless for workers, deep inside, they know that coloring red/yellow/green rectangles on a gantt chart is of little value. You can use that to your advantage if you make a request and frame it such that they can advance your progress concretely by helping you in some way that isn't possible for you to do alone.

ZenoArrow 9y ago
> "They want the project to progress. Desperately." I've repeatedly hammered home that we're understaffed. Those with the money to spend on staff seemingly couldn't care less. Any middle managers are stuck between a rock and a hard place. The phrase 'rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic' springs to mind.
pencilcheck 9y ago
In my opinion, those are PM who are incompetent because they can't pull and affect those people around them to come to an agreement that everyone is ok with. This type of PM (which is everywhere) is afraid of confrontation to their superior and often can't ask the right questions of their peers and ultimately pull the right resources (in or outside companies) to help out the rest of the team to move faster or done things right.