Many years ago, when I was at the very beginning of my project management career, I worked for a large organization that was setting records in service sales and implementations worldwide. We worked with world’s leading telecom companies and their clients. Our timelines were challenging and our client’s expectations were high. The company culture implied many hours of dedicated work, attention to detail, availability and accountability. On the project management side, it required a very assertive approach.
I remember one of my conversations with our sales manager (today he is the CEO of a very successful international enterprise) who called me to let me know of the new client expectations on my project. He said something like “We have to deliver the Web interface in 2 months”. I said, “But in that case our vendor should be delivering their portion in 3 weeks at the latest – let me check if that is possible”. I called the vendor and their director Sophia, a very experienced and knowledgeable professional, told me that she can try to do her best, but considering the volume of orders and the shortage of staff, the best she can commit to is five weeks.
I came back to my sales partner to deliver the bad news. He looked at me and said: “Let’s bet that I will talk to Sophia and it will be three weeks”. I was still learning. I sensed his confidence and I thought “If there is a way to achieve that, why couldn’t I do it?”. I responded “No need to bet. Let me try one more time”. It was back then that I learned that determination and persistence can help you achieve a lot. I called Sophia again. We looked at all the possible and “impossible” options. Eventually, by getting back to my management and changing the vendor priorities, assisting the vendor on some activities to compensate for the staff shortage, shrinking the interface scope and applying schedule compression techniques, we came up with a two-week commitment (instead of three!).
Was I assertive? – Yes. But in this case, I was compassionate as well. Assertiveness alone does not always work well in most of the organizations today. “Pushy” managers are not respected. Managers that are just “pushy” are classified as “bosses”. Those who combine assertiveness with compassion, participation, dedication, collaboration and proper communication skills are seen as leaders.
My first "mini-crisis" management experience with the next organization I worked at was memorable as well. This organization had a completely different culture. People were very professional at what they did, however it was not appropriate to challenge them with any time commitments.
My colleague Dave was supposed to perform a critical path activity on one of my projects. The project was well planned and no schedule risks had been identified. I asked Dave to perform the activity “next week”. He said “sure”. The next week passed and the activity was not performed. I sent a friendly reminder. Nothing happened. After two or three reminders, I sent him a more detailed email, explaining how important this task was and that if this task was not completed within three days, the entire project could be at risk.
Before pressing the send button, I read my email and decided to change some wording to make it less “pushy”, even though it was a very friendly message all together. Then I read it again and made it even more nice and friendly. After my third iteration, the message looked to me like nothing but a compliment to Dave, something like “Dave, your help on this project is so much appreciated. You are doing a great job. Listen, we really need to have this task completed within three days, otherwise our project could be at risk. Could you please help?”, and I pressed the send button. 30 minutes later I was talking to my manager. She was telling me that Dave’s director is complaining that I am “pushing” Dave to do the task.
Yes, such environments exist too. And the project managers face a choice – either they try to justify the delay and avoid asking for any commitments from their team members (not a good thing to do) or they use their communication skills to try to deal with those individuals who are extremely sensitive to being asked for time commitments.
Now, why are they not in favor of time commitments? – Probably, they are not that good at their own time management, or maybe they get stressed when somebody asks them to commit to a certain date. They could have personal issues that you are not aware of that prevent them from giving you a commitment. And in some cases (yes, such things also happen), people could be just lazy and not self-organized.
In any case, communication is the key. If you are asking your team resource for a time commitment, let them know that you share the responsibility for the commitment with them. Ask them if they require any assistance or if you specifically can be of any assistance. Most of the time, they would say “no” and once they reject your assistance, subconsciously they will assume more responsibility over the deadline. If you see they need your help, take the time to look into different options together with them. By doing so, you could make the task clearer, the steps more obvious, the plan more real and the goals more achievable.
And who knows, maybe someday, when you are stuck with a stressful task on your shoulders, that same team member will offer their help to you.