Reflecting Reality

Often times, the only thing required to help people and organizations improve is to help them see reality. This is the value added by project managers, outside consultants, schedules, and status reports. You would think that these people and activities don't add value--that we can just supervise ourselves. In practice, we are not good at seeing reality on our own. Once people see things as they really are, they are usually good at addressing problems on their own and the manager or colleague doesn't have to be the bad guy.