Laura’s Winning Ideas

In preparation for Orals, you may want to add a few practice questions to help your Program/Project Manager develop a strategy for dealing with questions about his/her personal life.

The Wall Street Journal just published a story about research into the personal life of CEOs affecting success of the firms they lead. The research compared personal events such as deaths among family members, and purchase of McMansions to the succeeding change in profits of the firms over the following few years. This is not a single research study, but several, all coming to the conclusion that “personal” issues impact the success of the team.

If you work on Federal Procurements, especially DOE, you are accustomed to having the Project Manager and/or your corporate executives participate in Oral interviews. The research findings in this report may cause the Q & A to get somewhat more personal.

This research is being conducted by Business Finance Professors, rather than Social Scientists. That makes the results more interesting to a contracting officer. The research focused exclusively on the leadership, so there is quantifiable justification for prying into the personal life of the leadership, not the rest of the management team. In my opinion, personal questions of the Program Manager will pass DFARS review, especially in light of these research results.

The article is, Scholars Link Success of Firms to Lives of CEOs. and if you are interested, please click on the link to read/print/email the article by September 13 when this link expires for non-subscribers.

When I prepare a team for Orals, I check to see where the temper point is. That is, how much does it take to push the person from reasoned to emotional response. Then I know how thoroughly they need to be prepared for Q&A. Personal questions can trip you up more easily. Now, those personal questions might be coming from the Selection Board, not just a nosy Orals Coach!