Understanding someone's inner logic

This is an interesting article from Harvard Business Review.
How many times have we faced the same problem. We find someone's behavior or thinking as unreasonable or illogical. But if we delve deeper and probe with the right questions, we might be pleasantly surprised that its perfectly reasonable and logical when we understand the motivation and mindset that the person is working with.

This is especially important in the context of project management. When you face a seemingly unreasonable stakeholder or client, maybe its time to take a step back. And ask different questions. Find out what could be motivating this unreasonable request.

I remember this quote from Ayn Rand (one of my favourite writer), "Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong."

Bear it in mind. It might get you out of an awkward confrontation.

Read more here.
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/08/discovering_the_other_persons.html

Different language & expectations.

You probably would have seen some variation of this set of images. I created this sometime back as part of a "Project Management 101" training program for my team of project managers. I wanted to show how disconnected a project could be, in terms of expectations and responsibilities from different stakeholders involved in a project. With simple images, it really does push the point across.

I truly believe that the project manager is the key person in making sure everyone has the same objectives and speaks the same language. A strong project manager would greatly reduce the disconnect seen in the cartoon above.

Does your organisation have a different set of stakeholders? Like to create your own set of project management cartoon like the above? Try this at Project Cartoon.