November 7, 2006 - Being Heard and Not Ignored Part 2

Yesterday I began writing about how to get people to listen to you. The first step was to have something to say. The second may take a little longer.

Know the language. One of the biggest challenges facing PMs as they enter a new environment is being able to speak the lingo. The basics of project management are fairly universal but the specifics of the assignment are extremely diverse. You aren’t required to be the expert on all technical pieces, but you need to be conversant in the language.

Last week a PM was telling me about a recent assignment she managed. She took over an infrastructure roll out of approximately 70 new servers. Being her first infrastructure project, she was basically clueless. Acronyms and phrases were being thrown at her like rice at a wedding. With a little effort, listening and guessing she was quickly spouting words like racks, servers and cabling. As her vocabulary improved, so did her credibility.