
Jump ball in a game of basketball. The official supposedly has no stake in the game. His role is to ensure a fair outcome by enforcing the rules of the game.
Coordinators in the project context have analogous responsibility. They're responsible for producing a good outcome by ensuring that all team members have what they need to carry out their roles.
In the project context, to coordinate is to organize events or activities across a group of people to help them work together effectively. The coordinator role often serves as a clearing agent for information, gathering data and distributing it across the project team. And sometimes, coordinators negotiate with team members to help them find ways around obstacles, conflicts in schedules, and conflicting agendas. Ethical coordinators are reliable sources for information about what some call the project's ground truth — its reality, its true status.
Unethical coordinators are up to something else. Their motives vary, but generally they have two sets of goals that can sometimes conflict. One goal, clearly, is the project's success. Another goal is more personal — the success of the organization or team they represent, or perhaps the success of their immediate supervisors. Coordinators who are in these conflict-of-interest situations are at risk of a breach of ethics when they place the personal goal above the project's success.
For example, consider an enterprise — call it OMC (Over Matched Corporation) — that's undertaking a large and complex project — call it Marigold — that requires sophisticated capabilities unavailable in-house. OMC has enlisted external assistance — call it LPC (Large Project Coordinators) — to coordinate Marigold. While it's true that LPC personnel want Marigold to succeed, they also want LPC to be seen as contributing to Marigold's success. And that situation can create a conflict of interest for LPC personnel. They must exercise their responsibilities with special care to avoid ethical breaches. Most do. Some don't.
To gain insight Project coordinators are at risk
of a breach of ethics when
they place personal goals
above the project's successinto the ethical difficulties relating to coordinating large projects, let's consider the relatively narrow topic of how LPC personnel might make decisions about Marigold project information. For convenience I'll use the name Larch to refer to LPC's coordinator on Marigold.
- Withholding information — or not
- When Larch takes minutes at meetings for distribution afterwards, he gathers status information about action items. When action item Daffodil is overdue, he can choose how he presents the reasons for it being late. Assume for the moment that the reasons for Daffodil being late do shelter Daffodil's owner from any repercussions. Larch might be more inclined to include those reasons in his meeting minutes if Daffodil had been assigned to LPC personnel, than he would be if it had been assigned to OMC personnel. He might also be more inclined to include that exculpatory information if Daffodil's owner is someone from OMC whom LPC favors. If his choice is influenced by whether or not LPC favors Daffodil's owner, he might have crossed the ethical line.
- Manufacturing information
- "Manufacturing" information includes creating it from whole cloth, but it also includes unusually energetic research to develop information that meets specific needs. For example, Larch might want to provide cover for an LPC mistake or lapse; or he might want to raise questions about the performance of an OMC employee or someone affiliated with a contractor other than LPC. Any such activity at odds with the truth, or undertaken for reasons other than Marigold's success, might constitute an ethical breach.
- Managing information flow
- Larch can also control the timing and targeting of information distributions. He can provide information earlier to some people than to others, which provides advantages to those who receive it early. For example, if he uncovers bad news about LPC performance, he can provide it to LPC personnel, who then have extra time to prepare responses or to fix whatever is amiss. He can do this for seemingly appropriate reasons: "I asked Nan to review the report for accuracy," or "I asked Ed for background on the Severn delays."
Detecting these kinds of ethical breaches is difficult for OMC personnel if LPC has tight control over Marigold information. The situation can easily develop into one in which the tail (LPC) wags the dog (OMC). Recognizing these tactics is a valuable first step. Prevention and possible correction of unethical coordinator behavior are topics for another time. Top
Next Issue
Is every other day a tense, anxious, angry misery as you watch people around you, who couldn't even think their way through a game of Jacks, win at workplace politics and steal the credit and glory for just about everyone's best work including yours? Read 303 Secrets of Workplace Politics, filled with tips and techniques for succeeding in workplace politics. More info
Your comments are welcome
Would you like to see your comments posted here? rbrenogMhuqCxAnbfLvzbner@ChacigAthhhYwzZDgxshoCanyon.comSend me your comments by email, or by Web form.About Point Lookout
Thank you for reading this article. I hope you enjoyed it and
found it useful, and that you'll consider recommending it to a friend.
This article in its entirety was written by a human being. No machine intelligence was involved in any way.
Point Lookout is a free weekly email newsletter. Browse the archive of past issues. Subscribe for free.
Support Point Lookout by joining the Friends of Point Lookout, as an individual or as an organization.
Do you face a complex interpersonal situation? Send it in, anonymously if you like, and I'll give you my two cents.
Related articles
More articles on Workplace Politics:
How Pet Projects Get Resources: Cleverness
- When pet projects thrive in an organization, they sometimes depend on the clever tactics of those who
nurture them to secure resources despite conflict with organizational priorities. How does this happen?
You Can't Control What Other People Think
- Ever think that the world would be a much better place if you could control what other people think?
Maybe it would be. And maybe not...
Problem Displacement and Technical Debt
- The term problem displacement describes situations in which solving one problem creates another.
It sometimes leads to incurring technical debt. How? What can we do about it?
Meets Expectations
- Many performance management systems include ratings such as "meets expectations," "exceeds
expectations," and "needs improvement." Many find the "meets" rating demoralizing.
Why?
Columbo Tactics: II
- This is Part II of a series showing how the less powerful can adapt the tactics of TV detective Lt.
Columbo when they're interacting with the more powerful.
See also Workplace Politics and Devious Political Tactics for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
Coming September 27: On Working Breaks in Meetings
- When we convene a meeting to work a problem, we sometimes find that progress is stalled. Taking a break to allow a subgroup to work part of the problem can be key to finding simple, elegant solutions rapidly. Choosing the subgroup is only the first step. Available here and by RSS on September 27.
And on October 4: Self-Importance and Conversational Narcissism at Work: I
- Conversational narcissism is a set of behaviors that participants use to focus the exchange on their own self-interest rather than the shared objective. This post emphasizes the role of these behaviors in advancing a narcissist's sense of self-importance. Available here and by RSS on October 4.
Coaching services
I offer email and telephone coaching at both corporate and individual rates. Contact Rick for details at rbrenogMhuqCxAnbfLvzbner@ChacigAthhhYwzZDgxshoCanyon.com or (650) 787-6475, or toll-free in the continental US at (866) 378-5470.
Get the ebook!
Past issues of Point Lookout are available in six ebooks:
- Get 2001-2 in Geese Don't Land on Twigs (PDF, )
- Get 2003-4 in Why Dogs Wag (PDF, )
- Get 2005-6 in Loopy Things We Do (PDF, )
- Get 2007-8 in Things We Believe That Maybe Aren't So True (PDF, )
- Get 2009-10 in The Questions Not Asked (PDF, )
- Get all of the first twelve years (2001-2012) in The Collected Issues of Point Lookout (PDF, )
Are you a writer, editor or publisher on deadline? Are you looking for an article that will get people talking and get compliments flying your way? You can have 500-1000 words in your inbox in one hour. License any article from this Web site. More info
Follow Rick





Recommend this issue to a friend
Send an email message to a friend
rbrenogMhuqCxAnbfLvzbner@ChacigAthhhYwzZDgxshoCanyon.comSend a message to Rick
A Tip A Day feed
Point Lookout weekly feed
