Unlocking Business Agility with Evidence-Based Management: Satisfy Customers and Improve Organizational Effectiveness

4

Managing and Overcoming Expectations

Bryan was a project manager for a large not-for-profit organization. Every Sunday evening, his anxiety increased as he started thinking about Tuesday’s weekly project status meeting. Bryan was responsible for three different projects, each with its own problems. He felt that his project role was not so much “manager” as “chief firefighter.”

Each project status meeting had Bryan reporting the summary status of his projects with simple color codes: green for “healthy,” yellow for “challenged,” and red for “troubled.” Red projects tended to get a degree of executive scrutiny that no one found useful and threatened career advancement.

The truth, however, was that all of Bryan’s projects were yellow at best. ...