Point 10 – No Slogans, Disingenuous Pep Talks or Slogans

As I see it, this point has two components. (1) Talk the talk and (2) Hold systems accountable.
Talk the Talk
Slogans are phony. Slogans are phony. It sounds like an advertisement and is not something you can trust. It is better to have guidelines and a vision for project management. The methodology should be taught to your project managers and teams. Let them follow the methodology and then create a system to allow the practitioners to improve the process.
Also, if you promise to deliver the product within a certain time, budget, or quality, then do it. Consistently. It is easy to convince upper management that you are too busy to estimate a launch and then fail to meet the deadline. Sometimes, this is Point #9: the project manager points the finger to stakeholders and says “well, it wouldn’t be so late” if they hadn?t changed their requirements. It is your responsibility to understand the requirements from the beginning. Stop pointing fingers. You might have been able to provide more accurate estimates if you had taken the time to understand their needs. There are no excuses.
Hold Systems Accountable
You cannot expect every project manager to follow a consistent and well-defined company method for project management if you don’t have one. I believe that the lessons learned from previous projects and project managers should be passed on either by osmosis, or psychically. The project manager should have known? How to properly plan for risk. You should be able to motivate project managers to do a better job. It was their fault that they were not omnipotent, right? A better approach is to have a set guidelines, tools, techniques, and processes within well-defined processes so that a project manger does not have to be a mind reader. It is not because your project managers are bad (more likely), but because you don’t have a system to manage them.