It takes a village to successfully manage a project.
Effective project managers actively cultivate 4 types of villagers.
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1. Technical Allies
It’s not the project manager’s role to be technical expert. Project managers partner with people who are.
This frees the project manager to support all team members, monitor the landscape, hold the vision and communicate the direction.
2. Translators
All industries and companies use jargon. Every department within a company has its own dialect. It’s not the best use of a project manager’s time to become fluent in all business languages.
Use translators. These are people who have expertise in the worlds you must engage in. Most importantly, they command equal fluency in both their technical tongue and the mainstream language – in my case, English.
Invite them to meetings; introduce them and their role if they are unknown to the parties at the table. I have asked translators to attend meetings that otherwise needn’t involve them. Their role? Lean into my ear and decode the conversation. As project manager, I jump in only when I need to bridge next steps in the process.
Also, outside of technical meetings, they help me explain to executive sponsors in mainstream language, enough of the project’s geeky bits for decision making.
3. Executive Sponsors
Every project manager needs a human who breathes rarified hierarchical air. They will have your back when the time comes. And it always comes. Players change, budgets shrink, manipulators run amok.
Your project is in perpetual jeopardy unless the CEO personally appoints you and a hand-picked few to suspend life while creating the first iPhone in a bunker.
The rest of us need executive sponsors.
4. Keepers of the Flame
These are your passionistas. The people who BELIEVE.
Project managers need flame keepers to help light the way and fan embers during roadblocks and stumbles.
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