You're a project manager.
After a client meeting you relay decisions and to-dos internally, and sometimes voices like these come up.
"Rather than that, how about this idea?"
"Personally I think XX. We should get more information like this from the client."
"This part bothers me personally."
A situation that comes up often.
I don't think they're saying something wrong. Of course, if it's correct feedback, we discuss and handle it right away.
The wording above isn't wrong as such — it's just an image, and depending on the situation it's totally fine.
But often it feels trivial and not essential.
Then I say something in the spirit of "let's move the project forward," with whatever phrasing fits the moment.
What we're asked to do / should do now is move the project forward.
Not "finish the project somehow, anything goes" — more: let's do what this project phase needs (research period? system build? marketing test period?).
Delaying a project for personal satisfaction is obviously wrong (if that's it, it's out of the question) — and above all, time is wasted.
Writing this, another concrete experience came back, so I'll add it.
I told an internal owner that the client had a request and feedback, please handle it — and they said they opposed the client's view, thought X, and asked me to tell the client that.
Mediating that back-and-forth also wastes time, so I asked the client for time and set a three-way meeting — but partly because trust from the client wasn't strong yet, the "advice" didn't really land.
That internal person, maybe by temperament, took a similar stance on other projects often.
Put simply: they'd become a commentator.
Because they'd become a commentator, a lot of it wasn't essential.
Hard to coordinate with. Communication cost high — and I gradually stopped coordinating with them.
Other internal members initially took the "advice" seriously, but as things got busier they inevitably coordinated with that person less.
(Everyone wants to move the project.)
Slight digression: opinions framed as caring for the customer or client can look like pushing opinions onto the other side.
However correct, without the other party's trust, it looks like imposition.
Now and then, internally or in client work, someone brandishes "valuable advice" as if to say I'm the expert who thinks this — and when others don't listen, they blame others. Nobody wins.
If you want people to listen, you have to earn trust. I tell myself that often at work too.
Internally, vendors, clients — you have to be trusted.
Trying to deliver "advice" and get heard without trust is really hard.
Back to the point. Anyone who's been a PM has probably hit something like this.
Basically no project is only what you imagined in advance.
If you try to adjust by hearing every stakeholder intention, you often just get a flaming project later.
Writing this I thought: in some orgs you can't escape being stuck between stakeholders, and no matter how hard you try it flames anyway.
I'm not mocking that at all — I genuinely empathize with how painful that position is.
I wrote this assuming B2B client work for clarity, but B2C is the same.
Let's do what customers are asking for. Let's move what needs to move now. Let's move the project forward.
Afterword:
The line "Let's move the project forward" can sound arrogant.
Like a weary face saying "this is why people who don't get it..."
Writing it I thought, that guy seems unpleasant.
In a manga it'd be a villain. In a suspense story, the one who dies first.
But someone has to decide or nothing moves.
Ideally you convince everyone and then move — but you still have to move, right?
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