Tuesday, November 13, 2007

If Lao Tzu were a project manager - part 3

"So the sage only looks at what is really real. He doesn’t look at the surface." - Tao Te Ching, Chapter 38

So here I am doing a project in the Nordics. One of the topics of discussion has been on status reporting. I have seen a lot of organizations that use the red/yellow/green stoplight motif for their status reports. I have also seen project managers that figure out how to manipulate the data so that their project will appear as green until things really fall apart, at which time they go to red. Taking this approach doesn’t really help because management can’t see when things start to go wrong and when they need to step in to assist.

An effective organization will have true transparency in their reporting. When an issue surfaces, it is communicated without fear of “shooting the messenger.” There’s not a focus on who’s to blame, but on how to fix things. Without this type of open communications, status reports aren't worth the paper they're printed on.

1 comment:

  1. Hi again! You see, I am in an organization that does not put importance in planning! There I said it, and maybe now you can imagine my stress at work.

    I would love to try the color codes for project management...and I want to include it in the COPC Executive Overview that I will be doing for the center next week...can you tell me more about it please?

    I would love to share materials with you...

    P.S. I hope you are having a great time doing projects with the Nordics... :D

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