Why We Must Care

Project managers often confront difficult choices. For example, how often do you face the conundrum of “getting it done” versus “doing it right”, “doing the easy thing” versus “tackling the root cause”, or “should the status health Yellow or Red”? If you find yourself plagued and even tortured by finding the best options when facing these difficulties trade-offs, then congratulations and welcome to our profession. My experience shows that while these can be painful problems, they are generally good and healthy signs that you care. Because the alternative, apathy, is far more consequential and sometimes with disastrous results.

“The Poisoning of An American City”, boldly printed on the front cover of February 1st 2016 issue of Time magazine, remind us the danger of apathy. While this story has been a front page news since late Fall, this declaration brings new clarity to the extent of failure at all levels of government and non-government organizations involved in the worst human created disaster in recent memory. How could something like this happen anywhere in the world (assuming a benign government with good intentions of serving its people), especially in a well-developed nation like the United States? As the story unfolds, the degree of failure at every level is just astonishing. The full analysis of what went wrong will take months to complete and even then, we may not know all the reasons and systemic failures. But in my mind, the predominant reason for this chain of systematic fiascos is a lack of care.

I do not believe that the people involved in this catastrophe had malicious intent, at least at the onset. People like the Flint city council, Dayne Walling (mayor at the time of switch), emergency manager (Ed Kurtz then), and many others including the engineers and operators probably felt that they were “doing their best” to save Flint money. Likely, most of these people are acting with the best of intentions. But given this magnitude of problem and the history of pollution of Flint River, perhaps the many concerned individuals either maintained their silence or squashed by the higher ups. When the problems were first reported, the government went through the classic five levels of government incompetence: deny, cover up, falsify, defect and finally accept.

Why is this relevant to project managers? Simple. As project managers, we have a “duty of care” to our stakeholders, especially to our customers and the ultimate users. Managing scope, schedule, cost, and the many other factors and project management processes are important. But none is more important than caring about the project and who we ultimately serve. Some time, project managers can overly rely on the project management processes, tools, and templates. But we should question if they are servicing the ultimate purpose of delivering the benefits. So the next time you are confronting difficult choices and having sleepless nights, pat yourself on the back. Because if you did not care, you can sleep quite soundly through that good night.

https://www.pmoadvisory.com/blog/why-we-must-care/