Had my eyes open in the dark

Tracking down root causes often reveals base, disturbing facts about our place in the corporate world. Project Managers are often working in the dark when it comes to real causes of delays and issues within any project….we are not given the insight to corporate wide decisions and political structures that are at the root of most project delays….I’m not talking about issues contained within a given project like missing tasks or poor processes, I’m talking about resource reassignment, uncooperative internal or external groups and funding changes. How often have you gotten push back or delayed response from a vendor, not because they’re incapable, but because they have not been paid for work to date? How many times when you’re looking for support from an internal group that you’re given the run-a-round, the real root cause being that the CEO has given conflicting goals/objectives to the various groups? We (project managers) often grasp at the most obvious cause to the problem and try to correct it, when in reality we’re chasing symptoms. We need to be more diligent, more willing to probe deeper, more willing to think before acting to really understand the root cause and be able to work within the given boundaries to correct. Act and don’t react. Know when then room is dark.