Some little time ago I came across a job ad looking for a project manager (and I quote) “to bludgeon the supplier into submission”. I’m not quite sure whether the agency thought that this was a good way to attract high class candidates, or what. The sad thing is I suspect it wasn’t a joke.<\/p>\r\n\r\n
Subsequent reflection on this got me thinking about really productive working relationships I have had with different suppliers. One common characteristic of these successful relationships has been the old fashioned virtue of trust. However, I’ve never trusted the supplier. I have<\/em> trusted the people who work for the supplier. I’ve trusted them to bring their specific expertise to the project and I’ve trusted them when they’ve told me that things are impossible, and I’ve trusted their judgement when we’ve discussed problems. I flatter myself that, again in the most productive relationships, the trust has been mutual. The supplier project manager has trusted me to manage things at my end, believed me when I said some elements are essential however difficult they might be, and so on. These have been relationships of equals, not assailant and victim. There has been a remarkably small amount of bludgeoning.<\/p>\r\n\r\n So how did I get to this position of trust? I had been conscious for quite a while, having worked with suppliers on many different projects, that the situations which I felt to be most useful were face to face meetings with people. No big suprise there. But actually I realised it was a bit more specific than that – in many cases the most productive discussions were actually the informal ones. The circumstances varied from sitting next to a developer and chatting about an issue, talking with a supplier project manager over lunch during a more formal meeting, even chatting to potential suppliers during a coffee break during a tender presentation. My experience of projects is that it’s usually a few people who are in tune with each other<\/em> who are critical to the success of a project. And it’s the informal<\/em> contact that builds this set of people who are in sync, and who trust each other, just as much as the formal contact. None of this is to say you don’t need formal meetings – of course you do. But don’t neglect the opportunity to build the relationship through the informal contact.<\/p>\r\n\r\n