The Pain Paradox was described by Rory Vaden to attendees of the PMI Leadership Institute Meeting in Washington DC this week. The Pain Paradox is his catch phrase for a common (maybe epidemic) dilemma in our world today. The dilemma is over our choices between near term work and discipline that help us achieve our long term goals vs. putting off the pain and payment for the nebulous future. We know that we can’t take the last step of our journey first, but our ‘get it now and pay later’ society helps us fool ourselves that we can. Keep in mind here that we have to pay one way or another!
The most obvious pain paradox examples are in personal finances or health. To achieve or improve in these areas we need to make the right decisions today and most days. These are typically small incremental decisions which involve small amounts of work (pain) now and help us gradually reach our goals. For our health however, we’ll put off regular exercise and go for the super triple bacon cheeseburger and double fries instead of the healthier options (yes there are healthier options!). These decisions add up over time and we pay for them later with obesity, heart disease, diabetes and the list of related complications seems to grow every day. The financial example is an equally simple trap that we can all fall into. We go for the car or house that we honestly can’t afford and max out our credit. Eventually we need to pay off the credit and face a huge wall of pain instead of the smaller incremental pain of disciplined saving and living within our means.
If the Pain Paradox is real, we must ask ourselves if we are falling for traps and avoiding the disciplined Project Management work - and if there is a building wall of pain coming for us? I think the obvious answer is that clearly some of us are.
One way to check might be to ask yourself some questions about your project. Here are some examples:
- Have you updated your risk list since the kick-off meeting? How about in your last team meeting? I’m sure they are not going to come back and bite you.
- Have you shared with your sponsor the latest completion estimates or are you putting that conversation off for when it starts to improve?
- Are you controlling the scope or is it creeping (galloping?).
- What about metrics? Are you measuring progress, tracking time, measuring quality?
- Have you built strong relationships with your project team? Did you say thank you to someone today? Have you filled their ‘buckets’? When you need your team to go above and beyond it is too late to start then, you’ve already hit the wall of pain.
The list of things you should be doing goes on and on for Project Managers so it may be hard to tell whether you are ‘right-sizing’ the PM work or if you are actually avoiding and putting off the pain. I think if you ask yourself these types of questions and honestly answer them, you will already have a good idea. It is still easy to fool ourselves here. The last suggestion I have is to make sure you are not making creative excuses and justifications for your decisions. Examples:
- The Methodology I’m using takes care of it….
- The Sponsor does not value that work – they won’t pay for it…
- This project is not very risky/strategic/complex/etc..
- Really the whole team is accountable for doing that…
- Our culture does not require it…
- We’re all professionals so I don’t need to …
- Add your own here…
As you consider these, I hope it becomes very clear whether you are being disciplined and doing the work every day or if you may have just ordered the Super triple bacon cheeseburger and fries!
Do great things! (with disciplined daily work:)
Ed Sullivan, PMP
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