10 Ways for a Project Manager to Get Fired
January 9th, 2008 by HalDon't you just love Industry Week? Whether you work in manufacturing or you do projects for manufacturers you gotta pay attention to IW stories. In the December 2007 issue there was a sidebar on careers. IW quoted from John M. McKee's book, Career Wisdom: 101 Proven Strategies to Ensure Workplace Success. McKee offered these 10 ways to get yourself fired:
- Don't have a clear life plan.
- Don't keep your skill set current.
- Never deliver results.
- Confuse efficiency with effectiveness.
- Believe that you are irreplaceable.
- Act like you already know all the answers.
- Surround yourself with brown-nosers.
- Forget to give credit to others.
- Fail to self-promote.
- Lose perspective.
My cynical self would see a list of 10 tips as filler. But I stopped to take a second look. On the surface there is no news in the list. However, in the busy, often over-burdened world of the project manager it's easy to see how one could fall into a pattern that produces one or more of the above behaviors. Are you keeping your skills current? How about giving regular and timely acknowledgement and credit to team members?
I don't understand how #9 got on the list. Failing to self-promote seems like a negative behavior. Seth Godin calls self-promotion "taking care of yourself at the expense of others." McKee couldn't have meant that. Perhaps McKee just meant to let your boss know what you've accomplished. In any case, this list might be worth clipping and hanging on your wall as a reminder. 
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January 10th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Reminders. We all need them. This is, as such, a good list, Hal.
There is something about how our minds work that require reminders, even of things we know.
This is central to Standard Work…ways to remind us of the key things.
Hope you are well!!!
January 29th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
Self-promote - you’re right but never forget that too much of promotion will work opposite way…
February 9th, 2008 at 5:50 am
Self promotion …
The key is to do it cleverly whilst promoting, informing and motivating others.
A weekly message/newsletter is an excellent tool. Call it part of communication management.
I wrote something on it here: http://www.blog.robert-llewellyn.net/?p=14