The call always goes the same way.
An intermediary runs through the assignment, the client, the duration, the rate. Then comes the question that actually decides it.
“Do you have any experience with system XYZ?”
“No.”
“Too bad. The client is looking specifically for someone with detailed knowledge of system XYZ.”
And there you are, left behind, thinking that they were looking for a good project manager.
The track record never comes up again. Twenty years of delivering complicated things in a controlled manner, and the conversation ended on a product name.
The festival
Run the same process somewhere else and watch how it sounds.
You are hiring somebody to organize a rock festival. Three days, a field, fifty thousand people who need to be fed, watered and got home again. The criterion that decides the appointment is whether the candidate knows rock music, and ideally plays a decent guitar.
That the candidate has already organized a jazz festival, a film festival and a food truck festival counts for very little.
If the candidate does not know the entire catalogue of Metallica, then surely managing a multidisciplinary team to successfully host a rock festival is a bridge too far.
Right?
Appointing a project manager on content knowledge rather than project management skill is appointing the right person for the wrong job.
You selected for expertise. You will get expertise.
You have hired a music fan and put him in charge of security.
Two things follow
The first is a conflict of interest.
A project manager spends most of the day weighing things against each other. Scope against time against money, and then explaining the choice. That requires somebody who is impartial about the content, because the entire job is deciding between things that other people care about a great deal.
An expert is not impartial about the content. That is what makes them an expert.
So the rock purist ends up choosing between budget for crowd safety and a first aid team... or one more band, the one he has wanted on that stage since March.
The second consequence is harder to see and does more damage.
Experts cannot leave the detail alone. They know too much about it. They cannot help themselves.
So they spend their time second-guessing the specialists they appointed, which undermines the specialists, and which keeps the project manager too low to the ground to oversee the whole field.
How to spot one
This type of project manager is easy to recognise in a Steering Committee.
They will explain, in great detail, why a particular change request for new functionality needs to be approved, including all of the technical implications. It is a genuinely impressive briefing, and everybody leaves it better informed.
However, that same Steering Committee will not be given an up-to-date forecast on costs, or an updated risk profile including adjusted mitigation actions and contingency measures.
Not because the project manager is lazy. Because the project manager has spent the month doing somebody else’s job, rather well.
The fix is not complicated, and it is not a compromise either.
Hire project managers for the things project managers do. Impose structure, price risk, arbitrate between competing objectives, report honestly and keep promises.
Then let the experts be experts, and hold them accountable for their own output, which is what they are good at and what they were hired for.
But if you must, carry on appointing whoever knows the most about the system. Just do not act surprised at what you get.
That expert is so busy tuning guitars and running through playlists with the band that there is no time left to make sure the ticket counters, the concession stands and the toilets are being correctly set up.
Far out!
Literally...