069: Top 10 Mistakes PMO / PM Leaders are Making (and how to solve them TODAY)

Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast + Blog, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers! PMI Talent Triangle: Business Acumen (Strategic and Business Management) I built my first PMO in the 90s (yes, in the last century!) and the truth is that I had no idea what I was doing! BUT, I had a Get. It. Done. attitude and a desire to learn and boy did I learn! A lot. I made a lot of mistakes and I learned a thing or two over the following two decades of putting PMOs and PM best practices in place.  Now that I teach and coach others the art of successful project management and PMO implementation, I am seeing some of the same mistakes I used to make when I was first starting out. I see PMOs that had a real chance of success getting bogged down in the not so important, while opportunity passes them by (as does their next promotion). While there are many things we can do wrong, there are MANY MORE things we CAN do right. Here are the top ten mistakes I wish I had known to avoid when I was in your shoes (and most importantly, what to do about it). I hope this saves you from learning the hard way, as I often did. Suffering from “Me Too” Syndrome Your execs go off to a conference or read an article and next thing you know, “we have to do that because everyone else is.” Sound familiar? Yeah, well, just because everyone else is doing it doesn’t mean it is going to make the most sense for you. You better be crystal clear on exactly what business problem you are trying to solve if you are going to make the time, money, and energy investment worth it. For more on this topic, check out Why do PMOs exist? Getting Caught Up in PMO Types or Maturity Sadly, many PMO leaders start building a PMO and putting templates and processes in place before they figure out what services will actually get the biggest bang for the buck in the organization. This is even more likely if this isn't your first PMO. You have some experience, you know what worked before, and you want to leverage that expertise to guide your organization through this PMO journey. Don't do it! You must figure out what your customers need help with first. You must identify the pain points that you and your PMO can solve. Then DO THAT first. Start with asking the right questions. Are you going to provide project management support? Will you provide governance and portfolio oversight?  Do they need coaching of PMs that aren’t reporting to the PMO? Think about who you want to be when you grow up…do you want to be the policing organization that everyone fears, or that my friend Lee Lambert calls the PMO Gestapo, or do you want to be the support organization that everyone turns to when they need to Get. It. Done? There's also a problem with maturity models. Every PMO is different and climbing an artificial scale of predetermined PMO value that doesn't align with your stakeholders' needs is a waste of time. Every PMO is unique and more is not better. Sometimes what you really need to do to provide value is do LESS and maturity models are all about more and more structure and process that may be unnecessary. The key is to solve the business problems and evolve your PMO services and capabilities as the needs of your organization evolve. For more on this topic, check out 4 Questions to Ask When Starting a PMO. Blaming the culture It’s very easy to say the reason your PMO isn’t working is because you don’t have the support or people don’t “get it” and it’s not your fault. It feels like you just keep pushing that boulder up the hill and it keeps rolling back down. I totally get it. I’ve lived that slow and agonizing nightmare of change resistance around every corner. What I learned, however, was to focus on what I could control and the rest would come along…eventually. Yes, you must practice patience, but even more importantly, we must learn how to do change WITH people instead of TO them. People are not resistant to change. They are resistant to change being DONE TO them. So,