Skip to main content

How to discover Pretenders?

Who are Pretenders?

Simply these are the people who Pretend… Pretenders can pretend anything in the world. They pretend they understand and they claim they are experienced. They think they are superior when compared to others and they want everybody to obey them blindly. Most of the people I met falling under this category were consultants or acting as consultants.

Pretenders are characterized by the following:

  • Think they know everything in the world
  • Think that books contain everything
  • Have faithful beliefs in theory and nothing but the theory
  • Use theoretical definitions heavily
  • Believe in all best practices
  • Use the word should a lot… they believe what books say, no what facts prove
  • Have an amazing superiority feeling, which may be coming from studying definitions by heart or from hiding behind their many certificates

They are Theory Relatives I guess… otherwise, they might be breathing theories!

Also, they:

  • Are logical but not reasonable, while others may be reasonable but not logical
  • Insist on going by the book even if not appropriate for the situation
  • Insist on using inapplicable templates/processes
  • Generalize a lot…“all problems will be solved”
  • Don’t refer to example from their practical experience… because they don’t have any!

They also have some shared traits with PJs as they:

  • Try to convince you in every possible way that you can’t live without them
  • Are over-optimistic and they have kind of confidence that the project will under-run. Please note that true PMs are pessimistic
  • Don’t listen and always interrupt
  • Don’t understand what you say in case they listen
  • Are not flexible and not open to suggestions
  • Don’t respect other’s opinion
  • Panic under real pressure
  • Keep resisting till things get really bad, they surrender and give you the lead
  • Believe that adding more people can speed things up
  • Are too perfect, don’t make mistakes. Well… to make a mistake, you should work, they don’t make mistakes… it’s obvious… they don’t work!!

Generally speaking, it starts like this… Pretenders are very good candidates for PJ jobs, actually they best fit in it and they are closely related!

Maximum Failure Acceleration Formula

When put together, PJ and Pretenders, in the same box, i.e. project, it results in the maximum failure acceleration for the project. Failure is calculated in terms of magnitude and impact on:

  • Project Time
  • Project Cost
  • Project Quality
  • Project Team

MaxFailureAcceleration

It was observed that the Union in this formula is natural and doesn’t need effort or catalysts… just leave this mix of PJ and Pretender for 1 day in room temperature and you will get the worst results ever!

Beware there are plenty of Pretenders around you.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle of Tactics

Sometimes referred to as the Triangle of Horror… where the PM tries his best to maintain his balance while walking on the very thin project rope between this triangle and the Project Constraints Triangle (time, cost & scope). The triangle sides represent: The Team, The Client and The Management Every side of this triangle is obsessed by the sole idea that the other two sides want him dead, i.e. the team thinks that the client and the top management want him dead and vice versa. Usually a good PM gets lost while trying to maintain this triangle in good shape to keep all parties satisfied and happy while making them think they are his first and only priority to get out what is needed from them for the sake of the project. From my perspective, this is a much harder balance to keep rather than maintaining and managing the Project Constraints Triangle… It highly depends on people, their culture, maturity level, and on the PM’s ability to understand this and deal with it in a ...
4 comments
Read more

RPM Technique

I once used a very weird technique with my team to get things done in a short duration in a project that was very far away from being on schedule… For a while I’ve been asking my team for their progress, following up heavily and on daily basis, staying late with them in the office and sometimes staying till the next morning (online from home), trying to dig deeper by developing and testing with them…. And still we were very late in achieving any of our internal milestones… By time, I was empathizing them and I was trying my best to reduce the effect of the pressure under which they were put for a long time. We started a weekly game competition with some funny yet work-related rules, amongst which was “ each member in a sub-team should finish his work before the day of the competition ”… it went fine for about 3 weeks, then the situation became worse… and we all stopped participating in the competition… I then tried another technique… I started buying them either lunch or dinner in ...
4 comments
Read more

5 Reasons not to listen to a PM (for Managers)

Usually a PM cares about his projects and is keen to develop them as per the planned budget, time and scope. However, managers should not listen to their PMs for the following reasons: 1. PMs are Time Wasters PMs plan… They study and mitigate risks and project issues in proper ways to guarantee the smooth execution of the project. Planning is a bad practice that PMs should stop using and referring to whenever they discuss a project related issue. Plans are not really needed and in most of the times they are useless because no one follows them (all gratitude and respect reserved for PJs). Also, it is preferable to face risks when they fire. Anyways, who really cares for risk mitigation and contingency stuff! Let’s face surprises when they arise and use panic mode to push on teams to solve their issues! 2. PMs Forecast PMs track their projects and use trends, issues, project and client historical data to forecast project status and use corrective actions properly to maintain thei...
3 comments
Read more