![\"wanna](\"https:\/\/svapm.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/11\/wannabuy.thumbnail.png\")
I was recently working with some relatively young (well, pretty much everyone seems to be younger these days) software developers beginning to make a transition into project management.\u00a0 As we were going over some of the PM responsibilities and tools, one of them asked, “A lot of this sounds like selling.\u00a0 Don’t we want to stick to the hard facts?”<\/p>\n
Whoa.\u00a0 For a moment I was floored.\u00a0 Was I telling them to sell?\u00a0 Was I, a hardened and cynical manager, being squiffy?\u00a0 Didn’t I ask these very same questions a long long time ago?<\/p>\n
Before my brain re-engaged, one of the engineers spoke up and essentially said, “I have to sell my ideas all the time, otherwise I end up doing dumb things.”\u00a0 Immediately, another developer responded, “But it’s such a waste of time!\u00a0 If we would just spend the time to lay out all the facts, most decisions would be obvious.”\u00a0 Then the discussion took off with at least two camps representing those views.<\/p>\n
I am a big fan of facts.\u00a0 Without them decision-making may become a strange game and less about achieving effective solutions.\u00a0 On the other hand, three things occur to me:
\n1) You never have all the facts (ok, never say never, but you get the gist)
\n2)\u00a0 It is our perceptions that are real to us
\n3)\u00a0 Since there are so many people involved in most of our projects, “soft” facts can be just as important.<\/p>\n
So, while I can empathize with the need for more facts, we will be making decisions without all the facts — many times the available facts will still leave us with significant uncertainty.\u00a0 One of the key transitions a lot of have to make is to let go of our analytical need for more “perfection.”<\/p>\n
Even if facts did “speak” for themselves, different people are likely to “hear” different things.\u00a0 We all bring a different perceptual “window” that feeds into our cognitive processes.\u00a0 So, I think another key transition we make is the realization that we need to spend more effort in shaping perceptions.\u00a0 I do not mean misrepresenting.\u00a0 I do mean that if we expect support from our stakeholders (and can we really expect to succede without significant support?), we typically have to influence how they think and feel.<\/p>\n
![\"pointing\"](\"https:\/\/svapm.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/11\/point.thumbnail.gif\")
Hey, maybe that’s the problem: the word “selling.”\u00a0 So, no, I am definitely not telling PMs to sell.\u00a0 Just spend some time and effort to have conversations with your stakeholders so that they can “see” and “hear” the facts.\u00a0 We might even find that\u00a0 jointly we come up with a superior set of facts.<\/p>\n
alan tsuda<\/p>\n
Alan has a management consulting firm that is totally dependent on its great customers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was recently working with some relatively young (well, pretty much everyone seems to be younger these days) software developers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,1],"tags":[123,95,137,496,445,497,65],"class_list":["post-1408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-communications","category-miscellaneous","tag-decision-making","tag-group-communication","tag-human-factors","tag-influence","tag-managing-projects","tag-selling","tag-stakeholder"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1408"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14146,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1408\/revisions\/14146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}