I am a hard fan of Scott Berkun especially because of great essays and his book “The Art of Project Management” (it has a new updated version called “Making things happen”) which is one of the best management books I’ve ever read. Trust me, it doesn’t contain any bullshits. It talking about the common stuffs in Project management with common sense.

This time I am really interest to quote about his new article in posted in his Blog “How to keep your mouth shut?” Why I am quoting this here because this is a common problem we face including myself  in our day to day life. At least I am experienced few things he mentioned in his blog post.

As a rule, if you insist on speaking your mind, you will inevitably find yourself in an environment where everyone hates you.  Most people can not handle the truth. And the more you shove it in their face, the easier it is for them to ignore you. You simply become the person who always complains, rendering any good ideas you have entirely impotent. Your ideas will be shot down simply because of the reputation of the mouth they come from.

When you’re working under good teams you will get applauded regardless of the senior audience. But he talks about the time where he worked in a team where no one spoke their mind in public.  Few people worked hard or asked tough questions. Quality of work, and morale, was low.

In this kind of situation people may consider your view points as wrong or arrogant.

If you don’t know the angle being played, anything you say might ruin the plan.

This is a great rule to follow before you raise objections or offer big ideas. No matter how right you are, if you care about effecting change, you should never open your mouth without some sense of who will agree with you and who won’t.  If you can anticipate the angles and responses, and judge, even by guessing, if there is a 80%, 20% or 0% percent chance anyone in good standing will follow your lead in support of what you say, you know whether it’s worth opening your mouth. It’s a world of difference of perception when someone respected says, after you speak, “he might be right” and when there’s only silence. And of course, in most cases your percentages go up if you raise your objections in private, rather than in a large meeting where egos are at stake.

We must have experienced situations where our words took in wrong sense. May be we’re talking or raising the hands when we are foreseeing some issues, dealing with BS management, poor tracking, planning, unrealistic estimations and schedule. But remember, someone more powerful than you should have to agree with what you’re saying, otherwise the situation comes like your words got misinterpreted. Trust me, it’s hard to convince your seniors and you will have to do your homework on how to convince them if you’re seeing some wrong or may we need to understand ourselves why such a decision has been made. For this Berkun has another interesting essay – How to survive bad managers?

If you’re saying something, just think twice whether it’s gonna be respected or agreed by your audience. If we’re feeling our ideas or opinions are great, we should have the convince the audience about your view point. Our actions and images are the core things behind these acceptance. If you’re having a bad track record it simply hard get proved unless you’re introducing something great to change the status quo.

On the other hand(receiving end), we’re not comfortable in changing the coziness we’ve, sometimes even if realize it’s a mistake. In the classic book code complete Steve McConnel says -

Any fool can defend his or her mistakes—and most fools do —Dale Carnegie

If a person refuses to admit a mistake, the only person she’ll fool is herself. Everyone else will learn that they’re working with a prideful programmer (person) who’s not completely honest. That’s a more damning fault than making a simple error. If you make a mistake, admit it quickly and emphatically.

The post is still incomplete because these kind of things may vary from people to situation. Some good related essays from Scott is here.

• Why smart people defend bad ideas
• How to pitch an idea
• How to survive a bad manager
• Why you must lead or follow
• How to give and receive criticism

[Updated 2009-10-13 12.00 Noon JST]

Fixed typos. reduced the usage of BS (Sometimes I forgetting I am not an American