Getting Results

Computerworld - In the late 1960s, Wayne Strider felt dehumanized by the experience of being "managed" in a large aerospace engineering firm, and he vowed to one day teach the world a better way. Thirty years later, Strider & Cline Inc., an IT management consulting firm in Kansas City, Mo., of which Strider is a founding partner, fulfills that vow. His new book, Powerful Project Leadership ( Management Concepts, Inc., Vienna Va., 2002) is available at www.managementconcepts.com.

"We use our intellect, empathy, compassion, courage, enthusiasm, humor and acceptance to create a positive environment safe enough to encourage maximum learning and growth," the firm's Web site decrees, and the firm extols the belief that "being competent and human at the same time can be a good thing."

On the other side of the fence is Marlene Dolan, a project management consultant at Boston-based Workplace Initiatives, who is laser-focused on creating an environment in which things get done—on time and on budget—even if that sometimes means ruffling a few feathers, she says.

There's nothing touchy-feely about the way Dolan lays out project tasks and then moves sharklike toward deadlines. Rather, she's direct, sometimes abrupt and, by her own admission, politically incorrect at times. Indeed, it was the CEO at her last job at InsightShare LLC, a North Andover, Mass.-based customer relationship management software and services firm, who gave her the title "project meanie." However, that shouldn't be surprising for a person who scored one out of a possible 100 on a personality test designed to measure one's need to be liked.

Computerworld spoke with Strider and Dolan about their respective approaches and why they think theirs are the right ways to get the most out of project staffers.

Q: What is it that people still don't get about project management?

Wayne Strider, founding partner at Strider & Cline Inc.

In the process part, decision-making causes the most trouble. The people part is probably the least understood and gets the least emphasis on projects. This is the part about people trying to work effectively with each other and all the messy stuff that happens when people try to do that.

Dolan: That title puts you in a box. Instead of putting project managers in charge of projects, the emphasis should be on putting leaders in charge of making business initiatives happen. Get rid of the words project management. The very head-set that language creates throws people down the wrong track at the outset and causes a bunch of wrong decisions—about the caliber of person needed to run the job, the depth and extent of the political landscape that will need to be navigated, the timing and investment.