Musings on project management: Love what you do?

Monday, December 28, 2015

Love what you do?

Do you love what you do? Do you like the project and the people there? Good!

Some caution advised: The project does not love you back, though the people on the project may think you are the greatest.

People, we observe, are in constant tension between:

'People are our most important asset', and
Liabilities for salary and benefits

And so, which is it: asset or liability?
Before you answer, here's a bit of balance sheet 101:

Assets are held by the company and provided to the project office as resources. Obviously the company does not literally hold people per se, except maybe by employment contract, but your commitment to the company is a company asset.
Liabilities are held by others and are loaned to the company to finance assets. In your case, your willingness to wait for your salary and benefit payments is a loan to the company.
If you are worth more than they pay you, then that is 'good will'. Good will is an asset in excess of liability, and really is a benefit to the owners/stockholders (who probably don't know you at all if it is a public company)

Now, the project office is on a mission to maximize throughput, which means minimize variable input to just that required to keep constraints optimized [See: Theory of Constraints].

So that means that as soon as you are not an asset, you are a liability. And, the switchover can be instantaneous, or so it seems.

So, back to caution: Your project manager may love you; your project doesn't.