Leading Without Crutches
Tom Sheppard
The Skillful PM (TM) specializes in providing leadership to large ($10mm+) projects for US financial services companies.
(based on Chapter 1 of The Art of Project Management by Tom Sheppard)
? 2025 TheSkillfulPM.com
Project managers typically must operate in a matrixed management structure where s/he has little or no positional authority or proprietary resources.? Without the crutches of positional and organizational power available to a line manager, the matrixed project manager must learn real, genuine leadership skills to motivate people to do what needs to be done.?
The power play of relying on the organizational authority of the project sponsor is the course of last resort for a project manager, and relying upon it reveals the lack of actual authority the project manager holds.? It is the same as “going over someone’s head”, and it can end very badly for everyone when a powerful manager is forced to take a stand between a project manager and a department head.
??????????? In contrast with this risk that project managers in matrixed roles face, the department head who is acting as a project manager has clearly defined boundaries of power and authority and can tell a subordinate manager to “do it because I said so,” and get away with it.? That is a power play a matrixed project manager can only take at great personal risk, to order actions on his or her own authority.
??????????? And yet, the skillful project manager will know when to overreach beyond their official authority and put themselves at risk of dismissal to deliver the results the business needs.
??????????? Call me a project management snob if you will, but until you have run a project in a matrixed environment, I don’t think you have really experienced the meat of project management, regardless of what title you held.? Up until then, you have been able to rely almost wholly upon the science of project management, regardless of how big the project was.
The author specializes in leading big-budget, high-risk projects and programs in the US financial services industry.
The Art of Project Management can be found on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and directly from the author through this link.
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