"Well," I responded, "I have a different idea. I think the first job of every project manager is to learn how to judiciously disappoint those who are paying the bills."

The sponsor's checkbook doesn't buy them final perspective on reality. The last thing either of you need is an admiral that second guesses the compass reading.

Not surprising, I found that this client had created a project focused upon pleasing (as in  -  not upsetting) their sponsor. Equally unsurprising, the sponsor was pissed. I've noticed that one of the quickest ways to anyone's animosity is to try to tell them what you think they want to hear.

Try this as a simulation. Split a group into teams of two people each. Send one of each pair out of the room. Instruct the remaining partner to, when their partner returns, engage in a dialogue about some meaningful issue while trying to respond only as they think the other person wants them to respond. Bring the absent partners back into the room and begin the dialogues. After a time (five or ten minutes) bring the whole group together and discuss how it felt to be in these dialogues. You'll find mystified and angry people. You know why.

This idea that it is everyone's first responsibility to keep the customer, sponsor, boss, spouse, or family happy is the root of much unhappiness. This is because it is not in your power to make anyone else happy. It isn't anyone's job to make anyone else anything. My happiness is my own business and I wouldn't cede any responsibility or authority over it to anyone, not even you. Besides being impossible (which is disqualifying enough for some), making someone else happy is a disabling act, in the way of the real source of their happiness. It is a way of keeping others in the dark and at arm's length. Pseudo-relationships result.

John Cleese tells a story about a pilot who asked the altimeter how high he was only to hear the altimeter respond by asking how high he wanted to be. This is the silly circularity we get when we engage in what's popularly termed "brown nosing." The appearance of stability remains until catastrophe intrudes.

"Why," another client asked a contractor, "didn't you tell me the truth?"

"Well," the contractor responded, "I didn't know you that well. I didn't know how you'd respond."

"Had you told me the truth I would have responded differently than I am responding now," she replied. "You're fired."

Life is messy. This messiness is not avoidable or even very deferrable. It is inevitably embraced. I have never disclosed an uncomfortable truth without feeling sick to my stomach. Often the most immediately attractive choice seems to be to stuff the truth and report what I think they'd rather hear and what I'd rather tell. This only complicates the plot line. What I have nearly universally found is that the truth, judiciously delivered, is tolerable for everyone. The fuss it might create settles, leaving everyone wiser and the relationship better prepared to hear the next disconcerting bit, which will inevitably appear. In those few times when it has not been tolerated, I was dealing with someone who didn't want the truth; someone who wanted to second guess the compass.

I got some feedback this week that said I was not too well grounded in reality. I think this was right on the money. Conventional belief says that everyone has to do a lot of coloring of the truth in order to keep their job. If not brown, most people have to maintain noses that are at least a blushing buff color to stay employed. I used to believe this, too. And I have seen that because of this, many businesses operate like Columbus sailed, with a compass they do not know how to use. People who use their compasses are sometimes accused of being poorly grounded in the reality others insist is immutable.

The truth frees you from everything but the feeling that the truth will kill you. This brown nosed imperative is an illusion; mass hypnosis. Step outside the box once and you'll see. Step out of it ten times and you'll know. Step outside of it a hundred times and you'll understand. Step out of it forever and you'll never lose the feeling that you'll get hurt if you disclose.

Those who master this feeling master projects. They learn to accept the feeling while interpreting its intensity as something other than impending doom. Just like some learn to interpret bungy jumping as something other than a near-death experience, we each can learn to interpret in a different way those feelings that might drive our nose where no nose belongs; standing up rather than cringing down at the experience.

We each have within us remarkable navigation equipment. Many of us learned how to use this equipment incorrectly. Like Columbus, we sail in ignorance of how we might sail better. I was a world-class accomodator in my former life and I still default there at the smallest stress. Now I sometimes catch myself falling there and can right the ship before it's sunk. Stand up. Tell your truth. Live well.