Take a risk or play it safe?

Dear Bob …

I’ve been offered an opportunity by my current employer. Or maybe I should say “opportunity.” I’m not sure which it is.

I’d be leading a large initiative. It’s a team of 20, two years long, broken up into four major projects, each six months long.

I have a good track record here, but not a lot of experience running large projects. The biggest project I’ve ever led before this was four people for five months.

There is, by the way, no change in title nor has the company offered me a bigger salary or bonus, although they have made it sound attractive from a career perspective, saying it’s a high-visibility project and if I succeed I’ll be considered a prime candidate for future management positions.

To be honest, the whole thing is intimidating. I haven’t had any formal project management training and I’m not at all sure I’d succeed.

Or maybe I’m just letting my insecurities get the best of me.

What do you think?

– Torn between safety and opportunity

Dear Torn …

You’re really dealing with two very different questions. The first is whether the initiative can succeed at all; the second is whether you can succeed as its leader.

The first question is easier, so let’s start there.

You started with good news: It’s an initiative, composed of multiple short projects. That means it at least has a chance. If it was a single two-year project I’d suggest running away, as hard and fast as you can.

One minor red flag: It’s a two-year initiative. Projects have scope, schedules and budgets, and at least one of the three has to have some give. If all three have been set in stone before you’ve had a chance to put a plan together, chances are you’d be presiding over a deathmarch. And even after you’ve put a plan together, it would be a problem, since in a well-structured initiative, the early projects define the later ones. Another way of saying this is that only projects have fixed a scope, schedule and budget; initiatives are structured for ongoing discovery. So find out how much flexibility you’d have to adjust expectations and definitions along the way.

You didn’t say whether the sponsorship is clear. If there’s no sponsor – someone in the business who wants it, bad, deep in his or her gut, and has the authority to make things happen – don’t even consider taking this on.

And now, let’s talk about you. Can you succeed at this? Ask yourself three questions:

1. Are you anal-retentive enough to be a strong project manager? Are you methodical enough to wake up every day and go through the same routine? A lot of project management is repetitive – reviewing progress against the plan, adjusting the plan, making sure all risks and issues are properly tracked and so forth. If, for you, every day is a brand new adventure, project management might not suit your personality.

2. How do you feel about managing people who have been peers and will be again after the project? In particular, how good are you at holding people accountable to the schedule? The single most important responsibility of any project manager is to ask every team member if he or she has completed the tasks that are supposed to be finished, in public, during the weekly project status meeting; for those who haven’t to ask them, also in the meeting, what their plan is for getting back on schedule; and to only accept one answer, which is a credible way (usually, working extra hours) to get back on track.

3. How good are you at managing your own emotions? Projects are emotional roller coasters. Every team member starts out excited, gets disillusioned as the magnitude of the task becomes apparent, regains some optimism as the team starts to make real progress, and gets tired when the finish line is in sight but still a long way away. You will too, only you have to hide it while helping everyone else through the process.

Likewise, every team goes through the inevitable “forming, storming, norming and performing” stages of development. You have to help everyone else through the storming phase rather than becoming a combattant yourself, even though you’ll really want to grab various team members by the neck and squeeze as hard as you can.

That’s the best advice I have. You’re in a very common dilemma, trying to decide whether your doubts are the result of knowing yourself well or just reacting to the fear of the unknown.

I will say this: Everyone with anything on the ball should periodically put him or herself in harm’s way. If you don’t, you’ll never succeed at anything, because unless there’s a risk of failure there’s no such thing as success … only coasting.

– Bob

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