The PHB (Pointy-Haired Boss) as the Project Manager’s Manager

Today’s Dilbert contains an interesting view of project management. You can see the whole strip here, but the first three panels are particularly apt for project management, as shown at right.

I’ve seen this scenario play out in two ways.

In the most obvious version, one that parallels the strip, there’s at least one team employee left off one of the key project distribution lists, usually by oversight — e.g., someone joins the team late and whoever is adding her to the DLs misses one of them. It’s not uncommon, and it usually gets corrected without too much fuss or embarrassment.

However, it occasionally plays out in a more subtle — and nastier — form. A manager looking for a scapegoat for a failing project slowly begins to intimate to his peers or own manager that someone — let’s call him Dilbert — is not getting the job done. However, the manager doesn’t define the “job” for Dilbert, or even let him know that he’s responsible for it. Only after the time has passed does the PHB say to Dilbert, “Hey, how are you coming on the CPG project that’s part of Initiative X?” Dilbert is part of initiative X, but not part of the CPG project. All of a sudden, however, he’s being tarred with the CPG project’s failure brush.

The current expression for this situation is “thrown under the bus.”

=============

The lesson for management  is simple. Don’t do this. Don’t look for scapegoats. Step up. That’s why you’re paid the way you are.

The lesson for the project manager is much harder. First, if you can avoid working for managers like this, do so, but I know that’s hard — and even harder than normal in the current economy.

Second, you can often educate your manager. Most managers don’t intend to be PHBs — though a few do — and are surprisingly grateful when you can gently help them improve their own management capabilities. Unfortunately, in the legal world in particular, this capacity for humility and self-improvement isn’t as common as it should be.

Third, there are times you have to Get It In Writing. It won’t endear you to your manager, but it can protect you. That attitude will not help build a long-term relationship with your manager, so do the Get It In Writing thing rarely, and carefully. That said, it’s sometimes more important to build a long-term relationship with the idea of staying employed than it is with a particular manager, especially when you believe the manager relationship will be relatively transient.

Fourth and most important, you need to become deeply integrated into both the project team and the business world in which the project lives — Initiative X, in my example above. Do not become a bottleneck of the “everything has to go through me” variety, but do build and maintain lines of communication with everyone on the team, and do take the time to understand the business objectives of the work, not just project objectives.

Will this positioning and knowledge insulate you from a PHB out to get you (or get someone)? No, but few managers are really like that. Rather, they don’t want to fail themselves, and the worst of them seek to pin the failure on someone else. The best insulation against getting a failure pinned on you is to do whatever it takes to make the project successful for both your company or firm and for the business customer/client. Think of failed projects as the bus; if there’s no bus, you can’t be thrown under it.