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Hi everyone, here is Ricardo Vargas and this is the 5 Minutes Podcast. Today, I would like to talk about politics in project management. Yes, I'm talking about how to handle and understand the political aspects of your project. And do you know why? Most of the time, we think that to deliver a successful project, we need to be very good at planning, very good at budgeting, be able to make risk analysis and be able to, for example, make a projection, a forecast of a deadline, or managing stakeholders. But remember that managing a project, it's to manage human interactions. And for more information, the PMBoK guide and other methods talk about communication. Stakeholder management. Resources. There is a political factor that happens in every single project. Many times, you face challenges to deliver that are not because your project management software is not very good but because there is a political fight and you are in the middle of this political fight trying to deliver your project. So let me give you four tips. I want to just be very direct about four aspects you should keep in mind when you are analyzing these political factors in your project. The first one is influence mapping. You need to understand who is who inside a project. And, of course, you may say, oh, I can see this in the org chart. Not at all, because the org chart just showed the hierarchical position. Who manages who, but you don't know the true relationships. You don't know who is connected to who. You need to understand that an organization is much more messy than what you can see in an org chart. People have connections; people have influences. It's like a network and not a structured network. It's much more like a chaotic network of influence. Someone who is in another area may exercise influence in your project, and you did not even know that the person was part of your stakeholders. So you need to map this. And how do you do that? And how do you understand this mapping? It's by using political intelligence. It means you need to be able to read signals and to read things that are not written, to be able to look at a blank sheet of paper and see what is written there with invisible ink. You need to understand what an eye to eye contact means, what you know, a smile or a waving of the head of Icelandic really means. And this means you need to be able to listen and to analyze. Listen. This is supercritical. You need to be able to. Like I always love saying, like we learn every say. You need to be able to go to the balcony to go outside and see how the game is evolving in that project meeting, in that supplier meeting, or in that executive committee meeting. You need to understand that this is political intelligence. The third aspect I want to share with you is strategic compromise. Many times you need to understand that you need to sacrifice parts to protect the core. And I know that this hurts, and this hurts. When I did that in the past, it hurt me a lot. You know, nobody wants to give up on things. But to remember, you need to protect the core. Many times, it is your desire to protect everything and to have everything ready. What do you do? You kill the project. You. You make the project unsustainable. And remember, sometimes you need to make concessions in order to deliver what you have promised. And this may be why you need to, you know, give a team member to another project or to give a part of your budget. And this is part of a political game that you need to understand. How many times, tell me, you know that how many times did the change of the sponsor of the project executive of your project completely support your project? You change the sponsor, and suddenly, you are the powerful project manager, and you become nobody next week, right? And it's life. Oh, what I did wrong. No, you didn't do anything wrong. But it's just politics that you need to understand and be aware. And my final topic on this is ethics. Remember, I'm saying all of this, but you need to play all this politics. Remember your ethical framework. It's not a dirty game. It's not a manipulation game. Because many times when we hear the word politics, it does not sound to us as something, I would say, clean as something fair. And and this is because of the bad reputation of this world. But you need to understand that you can play politics. You can understand, be aware, try to play this game in a clean way, in a non-manipulative way. You know, you don't need to say, oh, I will, I will, you know, play a very dirty game to, to, you know, to remove everybody from, that is blocking my project to deliver because many times even if you do that, things come back to you, things come back to you. Remember, your project is not a half-hour project or a one-day project. Things change, and when things change, you will be hurt in a severe way. So try to play a very politically savvy game, but not a dirty game. And my final message on this is why this is so hard. It's because you cannot learn just by reading a book, listening to this podcast, or doing a two-hour training or ten-hour training. This is a life experience. This is why I tell everybody that if you want to improve your ability as a project manager, you need to practice project management, and you need to practice this political awareness. This is the only way for you to understand how the game is played. There is no book that will give you a mathematical solution that you can apply. This book does not exist, and you need to understand it. If you really want to deliver your project in a successful way. Think about that, and see you next week with another 5 Minutes Podcast.
