You’re never immune to falling into the wrong path as a DPM

I was really excited to hear Sam Barnes new talk entitled ‘You Can Do Well, or You Can Do Good’ at the Digital PM Summit today and he didn’t disappoint.

As my friend Abby Fretz put it, it often feels like Sam is looking into your soul

With great power, comes great responsibility. Often as PMs we underestimate the power we have when we’re in a meeting room making decisions or giving a client a status update.

Sam bravely shares a time where he went into a boardroom meeting and told some key stakeholders on a project that their project was going to be delivered on time, even though he knew it was going to be months later.

No DPM is immune to mistakes, but it’s the learning from them which is important. Sam has created a little list of things to be mindful of in your career to ensure you don’t just do well, but you do good and most of all you do what’s right.

So how do you know if you’re doing well but you’re not doing good?

1. You start tolerating client bashing
2. You start taking project failure out on your team and start forgetting your team members are humans
3. You no longer get excited about new projects
4. You’ve stopped celebrating when projects come to and end
5. You find yourself in a clique
6. You start saying “I’m not here to be liked”

How do you know if you’re doing good?

1. You’re humble in victory and gracious in defeat
2. You acknowledge the power and responsibility you hold when you’re making decisions in a meeting room.
3. You operate as professionally and ethically as possible
4. You remain loyal to your project and to yourself

Full slides from Sam’s talk can be found here.