74: Judge & Jury

March 29, 2008 @ The Tao of Project Management from P M Blogger

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The Project
It was quite an effort getting ones mind back on work after the Easter break, particularly as in my case my son got married on the Saturday. But back to reality and the effort of evaluating the supplier proposals and presentations. Making decisions is always difficult and in this case three of the four suppliers look live they have good workable solutions so all other things being equal it will probably be down to the cost.

I am starting to get a few issues with dates slipping back from the dates people told me they could do things by. Not an unusual event in project management but a difficult one to handle well. Hopefully by patiently explaining the consequences they will start to realise the importance of delivering things on time.

The Way
The project manager’s role is not to play judge and jury, and not to punish people for ‘bad’ behaviour, when they don’t do something they should have. Punishment is not an effective way of controlling behaviour. The poor project manager tries to act as judge and jury instead allowing nature to take its course and in consequence creates a crude imitation of a very subtle natural process. They will find that punishing others becomes punishing work itself.

The wise project manager knows that there are natural consequences for every act. Their role is to shed light on these natural consequences, not to attack the behaviour itself. I know this, for this is the way of the project manager.

The Tao
Lao Tsu tells us:

If men are not afraid to die,
It is of no avail to threaten them with death.

If men live in constant fear of dying,
And if breaking the law means that a man will be killed,
Who will dare to break the law?

There is always an official executioner.
If you try to take his place,
It is like trying to be a master carpenter and cutting wood.
If you try to cut wood like a master carpenter, you will only hurt your hand.


This article is syndicated from The Tao of Project Management . The original article is available here. Read more in Project Management News, The Tao of Project Management .

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