Tips for winning when projects from the same organization are colliding over needed resources, or funding or other critical needs.
Two projects collide over an issue or a resource or access to equipment or funding? Well, the answer is probably…no one really. It’s never good to have conflict or competition in your own organization over something you truly need to get your job done. It can end up like an ugly presidential debate where everyone is from the same party, has primarily the same goal and mission, but they start going at each others’ throats because they have to for survival.
What’s best in this situation? Well, since we’ve established that the ideal is to not be vying for resources at all within your own organization, but the premise of this article is that it does happen, let’s consider what is best for YOUR project. And what is that? To get what YOU need, right? Be kind, play nice…for as long as you can, but it may get to a point where it is survival of the fittest. And you need to survive. Your project needs to not be the project that pays the price. How do you do that? Stay relevant, stay visible, stay important to your senior management…most of all – stay on top of it. To do that, you must be doing these three things and do them well.
- Report to senior management. Whether anyone asks you to do this or not, you want to do this. Send your weekly project status reports to all stakeholders, yes, but also send them to your senior management. It brings attention to your project, it ensures that senior management has at least heard of you and your project, and it should – repeat should – give you a leg up when attempting to acquire a needed resource or funding. Think of it like voting for a candidate…many vote simply for whoever’s name they’ve heard the most for those throwaway positions that nobody really cares about like “clerk of court” or “district judge.” If you’re reading this and you are a clerk of court or district judge then two things…1) I’m sorry and 2) you’re probably reading the wrong blog anyway.
- Send out company-wide success emails. Calling out the great accomplishments on your project to everyone in the company is a great way to gain attention for your project. Suddenly, everyone in the company has at least a cursory level of knowledge of the fact that your project just delivered a huge deliverable a week early at 5% more profitable than anticipated with a testimonial from the customer that you include in the email. Maybe 97% of those receiving the email didn’t know that you or the project or your team even existed, but that won’t be the case after you send out the email. Attention grabbed. Done.
- Always know everything about your project. I know, as a project manager, you think you know everything about your project. But do you really know everything? When you’re managing 3-4 projects at the same time it’s easy to pay the most attention to the busiest project at any given time. That may not be the project contending for a high priority resource right now. So, know everything you possibly can – no matter what’s going on or how slow some may be moving – about each of your projects. That way, when something comes up like this on any given project, you’re on top of it and can defend your project (till the death?…umm…no) to get what you need at that moment.
Summary / call for input
Hopefully, this type of situation doesn’t happen very often – it’s never fun becoming foes vying for resources and other things with a peer in your own organization. But, it will come up sometime for you if it hasn’t already, and I hope that one or more of these tips help you come out on top.
How about you? Has this type of situation happened to you? What have you found to be helpful to position you and your team and project so that you have the best chance of “getting your way” when you need it? Please share any suggestions or thoughts.
By Brad Egeland
