Dealing with a Micro-Managing Customer

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I was recently asked how to deal with a micro-managing customer, especially when the sponsor isn’t standing up to them. Here are a few tips for handling this challenge whether you’re a project manager or team member.

  • Trigger a debate. A stakeholder might micro-manage the project team when they feel that’s the only way to get what they need. They press their needs upon the project team without consideration for other areas of the business. In that situation, call a meeting with key stakeholders to debate the prioritization of project requirements. If other stakeholders choose not to defend their needs, the project can proceed with the micromanager’s priorities. Note: The project manager’s responsibility is to point out when a prioritization imbalance might exist. It is not to decide prioritization on behalf of the business. So, even if stakeholders are being passive, follow the outcome of any prioritization meeting where the key stakeholders are present.
  • Understand the micro-manager’s fears. Micro-management has a root cause. In addition to a perceived need for prioritized requirements, that cause could be past project failures or bad experiences with delegation. Micro-management might also be considered a way to circumvent organizational politics regarding the project.  Identifying the fear that created the micro-management helps you negotiate processes for a more productive relationship. Be understanding and flexible, and you might be able to reduce the level of micro-management.
  • Follow the money. In many organizations, the stakeholder who provides funding is the “final arbiter” for project scope and requirements. If the funding provider is neither the passive or micro-managing stakeholder, brief the funding stakeholder about the micromanager’s behavior. Understand the funding stakeholder’s priorities. If they don’t align with your micro-managing stakeholder’s priorities, tell the micromanager that you’re following the funding provider’s direction. If they protest, tell them to talk to the funding stakeholder and alert the sponsor as well.
  • Point out any conflicting directions and stop the project. As a project manager, if you receive inconsistent or conflicting direction, even after trying to trigger proper debates, you have only one viable recourse. Stop the project. This might seem risky. But moving forward while stakeholder conflicts are outstanding is irresponsible and conflicts with the ethical standards promoted by the Project Management Institute and other industry bodies. Stopping the project is proactive and less expensive than going forward with unresolved issues. So, stop working, document the conflicting directions you have received, and share them with the stakeholders in conflict. Only move the project forward after a debate is complete and the direction for the project is aligned.
  • If you are a team member… Focus on the information the micro-manager shares when they give you direction. That way, you can get insight to their motivations. Ask them questions about what they are trying to accomplish and what they are concerned about. Look for trends or patterns in the direction they give you. With this background, you might be able to anticipate future requests and proactively predict the bigger picture of what they are trying to achieve. That can help you establish trust and reduce their micro-management.
  • Running an agile project? Embrace the involvement! Agile works best when you customers are heavily involved. If a customer micro-manages, follow the agile spirit to address it. Call a meeting, talk as a team about what is and is not working with your customer, and strive to improve. Consistent and successful feature delivery will probably calm your micro-managing customer.

Have any experience with a micromanager? Share with us in the comments section. 

Coming Up

Check out my updated Learning Microsoft Project course! My updated version of Learning Microsoft Project teaches the absolute basics of Microsoft Project desktop in just over an hour. This revision includes more exercises to practice what you learn as well as a quick intro to Microsoft’s AI features for project management.

Also, I’m holding an Ask Me Anything Office Hours in October to answer your Project questions. Check my LinkedIn feed for a post about that event.

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This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 75,000 subscribers. This newsletter is 100% written by a human (no aliens or AIs involved). If you like this article, you can subscribe to receive notifications when a new article posts.

Want to learn more about the topics I talk about in these newsletters? Watch my courses in the LinkedIn Learning Library and tune into my LinkedIn Office Hours live broadcasts.

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The Project Goal is NOT to Complete Tasks!

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It’s important to remember that completing the project Gantt chart tasks or agile backlog items is not the ultimate project goal. Here are the true objectives project managers and their teams must achieve for successful projects.

  • Build capable stakeholders. All products or services a project provides should be easy to use, fit for purpose, and work with existing business processes. Stakeholders should be educated so the transition to those new products or services runs smoothly. They should be able to use them without help, and, if needed, help should be easy to obtain. efficiently get help needed.
  • Be a catalyst for learning and improvement. Projects always provide learning opportunities, such as risks that arise or relationships to establish with new vendors. In addition, every project involves estimation. Enabling learning and improving estimation accuracy by capturing the necessary information are valuable objectives that should be incorporated into every project.
  • Achieve the business goals. Projects are launched with a specific business outcome in mind: to deliver business value! That value might not be measurable immediately upon project completion. In fact, it could take several months to realize value. Project managers should consider their projects a success only when that value is achieved and recognized by stakeholders. Note: Establishing targets and processes to measure success should be part of every project!
  • Set the table for future projects. Projects are rarely standalone endeavors. They are part of a series of improvement steps or pieces of a long-term strategy to change a business. The completion of every project should facilitate the launch of future projects to expand the benefits delivered to the business. 

Think through the activities you perform as a project manager. Does your approach to project management help achieve these objectives? If not, what steps can you take to include them?

For more about objectives, check out my Project Management Foundations course.

Coming Up

Be on the lookout for the updated version of my course, Learning Microsoft Project. Get up to speed quickly with Microsoft Project. Learn just the essentials you need to know to create projects, add tasks, assign resources, and run reports.

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This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 74,000 subscribers. This newsletter is 100% written by a human (no aliens or AIs involved). If you like this article, you can subscribe to receive notifications when a new article posts.

Want to learn more about the topics I talk about in these newsletters? Watch my courses in the LinkedIn Learning Library and tune into my LinkedIn Office Hours live broadcasts.

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Be on the lookout for the updated version of my course, Learning Microsoft Project. Get up to speed quickly with Microsoft Project. Learn just the essentials you need to know to create projects, add tasks, assign resources, and run reports.

Coming Back Strong from Project Failure

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Failed projects damage financial status, discourage creativity and growth, bruise egos, and set back careers. Good news: with time, failure can lead to positive outcomes. Here are some benefits that come from project failure.

  • Learning opportunities. Say an organization spends time and money upgrading an information system, only to have it shut down before producing usable deliverables. The organization learned two significant lessons from internal and external reviews. First, some people didn’t understand what the new IT system would do and how it would do it. Second, diligence in evaluating the business case fell short. No one researched whether project cost and staffing estimates were realistic before funding the project. Based on these findings, the organization changed some behaviors, which lead to better management on future projects.
  • Better process discipline. The organization’s project failure also highlighted teams not adhering to good business practices. The business case issue triggered additional reviews, which identified the same problem in other areas. Tthe organization made sweeping changes to increase process discipline, which improved the integrity of initiatives and results delivered to customers and shareholders.
  • Enhanced listening. Under business pressure, project sponsors can become overly optimistic and desperate to deliver outcomes. As a result, they might not listen to concerns being raised by staff members. Failures can prompt sponsors and stakeholders to reflect on team members’ concerns and give them more weight in future project decisions.
  • More effective handling of assumptions. Assumptions are part of every project. How long they remain assumptions makes a difference in project success. For the best results, assumptions should be evaluated early in the project lifecycle to determine whether they are accurate. When assumptions aren’t accurate, you make them the basis for robust risk management plans, which improve project success.
  • More team synergy and determination. After a failure, demoralized project teams can be invigorated when they hear about process changes they can implement to be successful and get support from senior managers.  People don’t want to be associated with failure. When they are, the best way to rebuild team morale and synergy is having a chance for redemption. That desire for redemption creates a lot of latent energy toward making a project successful.

Think about the last time you experienced project failure. How did your organization react and was it effective? Do you think the approaches described above would improve results in future projects?

For more about learning from project failure, check out Todd Dewett’s Learning from Failure course.

Coming Up

Be on the lookout for the updated version of my course, Learning Microsoft Project. Get up to speed quickly with Microsoft Project. Learn just the essentials you need to know to create projects, add tasks, assign resources, and run reports.

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This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 74,000 subscribers. This newsletter is 100% written by a human (no aliens or AIs involved). If you like this article, you can subscribe to receive notifications when a new article posts.

Want to learn more about the topics I talk about in these newsletters? Watch my courses in the LinkedIn Learning Library and tune into my LinkedIn Office Hours live broadcasts.

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Exercising Authority Appropriately

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The best project managers are stewards of the businesses they support. Part of caring stewardship is appropriately applying the project management authority conveyed by the project charter. Here are tips for ensuring you properly exercise your project management authority.   

  • Use positive influence. Exercising authority can take many forms: forming partnerships or collaborating to accomplish tasks, or less positive approaches like coercion and other forceful methods. Coercion is not the answer. Use your authority to build relationships with stakeholders to achieve project goals within the current business context. Consider project objectives in relation to other initiatives and operational constraints. Here’s an example: Encourage a stakeholder to resolve a vital customer issue even if it means delivering a task late (as long as the delay won’t hurt the business as much as a disgruntled customer).
  • Exercise your authority within the constraints of the project charter and your role – and no more. Going beyond those bounds, via direct or implied statements, might not cause problems immediately. Over time, however, stakeholders may question your leadership. This is especially true if you report directly to high-level managers. There is a risk that employees will assume what you say is coming from your senior manager. If used indiscreetly, this “referent authority” can dilute the respect you receive from stakeholders.
  • Lead the project with compassion. Leading a project with compassion means maintaining balance with sometimes conflicting elements. You have to balance your care and concern for people, the project, the business, and yourself. If you focus on project goals without taking care of your people, achieving project objectives will be at risk. Being too accommodating with people’s concerns at the expense of project objectives also causes problems. The key is to be flexible while seeking the best overall solutions to all concerns.
  • Enforce the boundaries of project scope. In some organizations, scope creep can reach pandemic proportions. Even a little bit of scope creep can negatively impact project success. To protect project scope, put all changes through a rigorous change review process. Don’t accept a change request unless there is a positive evaluation of the resulting scope, cost, schedule (as well as quality and changes in project complexity).  
  • Provide the leadership stakeholders require. No more, no less. For example, giving task owners the flexibility to complete their work is appropriate. But if deliverables are unacceptable, you must take action to correct that issue. On the other hand, micromanaging (too much “leadership”) isn’t effective either. Take time to learn how to constructively apply your authority and expertise with each stakeholder, understanding you will need to adjust your style to match the needs of each person. 

Take a minute to consider your authority as described in your project charter (or write up what you think your authority is if the charter hasn’t been prepared yet). Then evaluate your approaches and processes to see how you might need to adjust them.

For more about project authority and leadership, check out Cyndi Snyder-Dionisio’s Project leadership course.

Coming Up

Join Angela Wick and me on Tuesday, August 13, 2024 at 12:00pm MT for our live broadcast PMs and BAs: We need to talk…about AI…and how it’s impacting our roles!

Everyone’s talking about AI these days. But is anyone listening? The focus is usually on how AI can make people more productive. Productivity boils down to doing the same old stuff faster. Our teammates and stakeholders use AI too! We will explore the benefits of focusing on using AI to make our deliverables more valuable to the people we work with and also how our roles impact our stakeholders who use AI!

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This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 74,000 subscribers. This newsletter is 100% written by a human (no aliens or AIs involved). If you like this article, you can subscribe to receive notifications when a new article posts.

Want to learn more about the topics I talk about in these newsletters? Watch my courses in the LinkedIn Learning Library and tune into my LinkedIn Office Hours live broadcasts.

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