The Project That Defined Me

Authored By Matt Snell

I was handed a failing project and told it was a chance to prove myself.

The last project manager had been removed – something vague about a clash with the client. I didn’t give it too much thought. I was ambitious, eager, and known for keeping calm in challenging environments. This was supposed to be a step up.

The project wasn’t the biggest on the books, but it mattered. It was part of a high-value client relationship that was growing rapidly, and my consultancy was keen to keep impressing.

Internally, it was seen as a “stretch role”. I’d been working toward a promotion for a while. The previous PM had been far more senior and experienced. But the client wanted someone who could manage difficult personalities, and I’d built a reputation for precisely that.

If I delivered this, it would be the final piece, and more. 

For my consultancy, it was a win-win: put a lower-cost resource into a high-value role.

For me, it was something else entirely.

First Impressions

The delivery team was sharp – technical experts doing their best under pressure. 
Quiet. Cautious. Worn down.

We were contracted on a fixed price basis to deliver the systems integration underpinning a new “enterprise operations work-management” app – a multi-million pound programme in a complex landscape.

I did what I always do—built trust quickly. Asked the kind of questions that sound simple on the surface, but reveal what’s underneath if you’re listening properly. Even though I wasn’t the most senior person in the room, I gave respect, and I earned it back from the architect, the test lead, and the engineering manager. I could speak their language, and I was bringing a fresh approach.

What struck me straight away was the atmosphere. This wasn’t a team that needed management. It needed protection and hope.

They were tired for a reason. And I was about to find out why.

The Client Dynamic

Then came the client.

The IT-side PM – let’s call her the Bulldozer - made an immediate impression. Not the good kind. Brash, high-energy, and utterly dismissive of my predecessor. 

“He couldn’t manage a project. Kept moaning about dependencies. Always blaming someone else.”

There was a clear warning in her tone. Don’t try the same thing.

But I’m a people person, and I handled it – probably too gently at first. I kept things friendly and consultative. That’s my style. But not at the expense of facts, not at the expense of my team.

At first, I think she thought I’d be easy to manage. I wasn’t. And that would become a problem.

The Players Reveal Themselves

The Bulldozer didn’t operate in isolation.

She reported to the Quiet Director – an intelligent and well-intentioned programme lead from the business side. 

He wasn’t deeply involved in the day-to-day delivery, but he could sense things were going wrong.  The programme was slipping, the energy was off, and I think he was genuinely trying to understand why.

To manage the wider programme, he’d brought in another supplier to coordinate delivery and manage business change.

That’s where Mr. Bigfor came in.

Polished. Confident. Disarming. The perfect mix of pinstripes and plausible deniability. Everything you’d expect from a top-tier consultancy.  At first, he seemed like an ally. Welcoming. Curious. Complimentary.

But in meetings with the business, something else emerged.

Bigfor had a gift – the ability to shift perception without drawing attention. He’d steer conversations just slightly toward the idea that delays were down to our team. Nothing overt. Nothing you could object to. Just small cues. Language choices. Framing.

I called it early. Quietly, but clearly. 
From that moment, I became a problem for him, too.

The Fuse Is Set

One of my first actions was to gather all existing artifacts—project plans, statements of work, and technical assumptions—and start digging.

It didn’t take long to realise something fundamental was missing.

There were significant dependencies on the client’s internal teams, including systems that needed to be ready, technical documentation shared, and integration points made available. This was all known. But none of that was written down. Not clearly. Not contractually. And certainly not in a way that would protect us.

So, I did what any responsible project manager would do: I rewrote the Statement of Work (SOW).

I spoke to the team. I made the implicit explicit. I documented what needed to be true for delivery to succeed.

And in doing so, I unknowingly signed the fuse.

Because the very dependencies I captured – the ones that should have been there from day one – turned out to be undeliverable by the client. Not difficult. Not late. Impossible.

The Bulldozer approved the revised document. Bigfor didn’t challenge it either. But once all parties signed it, the narrative was set in stone: delivery now hinged on something that the client could never deliver and would never arrive.

The trap was set. And I’d written it myself.

The High-Stakes Meeting

A few weeks later, the project was at a standstill. It had become clear to me (and to Bulldozer) that the reality of their technical landscape was a million miles from expectations. I was called into a meeting with the newly appointed Chief Information Officer (CIO).

It was a short notice. Closed door. Senior faces.

I knew what this was: a chance to flip the cards.
This was the most high-stakes moment of my career to that point.
I came prepared.

I’d spent hours reviewing dependencies, risks, and documentation. I wasn’t to blame. I was there to be clear. I didn’t disown what had come before me - I represented a company, and I stood by that. But I laid out the truth of where we were and why.

I explained the delay. I explained the cost to resolve it. I explained the options.
And I did it all in a measured, practical tone.

Nobody liked what they heard.
But nobody could argue with it either.

This was the turning point. It felt like leadership. It felt like delivery.

And that’s how I performed the textbook project reset and saved the day!

Except – that’s not how it really works… is it?

The Next Day

Nothing changed.

No reset. No clarification. No support.
The same reporting structure. The same silence.

The CIO was now off dealing with 20 other fires, of course, and they had delegated the project turnaround back to… the Bulldozer.

Suddenly, I wasn’t the rising PM who’d calmly told the truth - I was the one dragging bad news into every conversation.

The Bulldozer, now fully exposed, doubled down.

The weekly status reports I submitted were quietly edited. Red became Amber, then Green. Language softened. Risk reframed. When I raised it, I was met with a kind of fixed-smile reassurance: “We just need to stay on message.”

This was a new dynamic, but I had support. I went immediately to my internal Account Director – let’s call him… Single Malt.

Single Malt wore an air of success like he’d been born with it. Nothing was a problem. He made me feel both totally safe and strangely exposed.

And here’s where it got really interesting. Single Malt tied my hands before I even knew what happened:

“You cannot undermine the Bulldozer. Our contract is with them. You report to them, and they, in turn, report to the Quiet Director. You must not go over their head!”

“But, she’s sitting on my reports. She’s telling a different story to the Quiet Director – the project is blocked, and dependencies are being missed.”

“I know, but you’ll handle it – just keep doing what you’re doing.”

And there it was.

I tried everything I could. I continued submitting my reports to the Bulldozer - clear, honest, professional.

But the Bulldozer started presenting her version of progress directly to the programme board, making sure I was sitting next to her – “Matt’s helping us turn things around, he’s produced this report for us, it’s all on track.” I had no way to challenge without making it worse.

Bigfor knew precisely what was happening. He sat across the table, quietly smiling at me. Soon, the project would need someone to blame.

And who better than someone with no voice to defend themselves?

I’d walked into the fire to deliver the truth.
But the fire just kept burning.

The Pressure

My team had no idea what was going on in those meetings.

And that was deliberate.

I took every sideways comment, every meeting derailed by politics, and I shielded them. If the Bulldozer started throwing accusations, I’d end the meeting early or ask the team to leave so I could handle it one-on-one.

If anyone came to me anxious, I’d say: “You’re doing everything right. Let me deal with it.”

And I meant it.

I didn’t want them carrying that weight. I wanted them to feel protected and focus on the work – we were still genuinely trying to get this thing delivered.

But I was carrying all of it myself.

Bulldozer was now actively distorting the truth. They submitted progress reports I hadn’t approved, and attached my name to them.

I wasn’t just managing delivery anymore.
I was trying to survive a situation that allowed no space for honesty.

The Breaking Point

One night, I didn’t sleep. At all.

The next morning, I was physically shaking. I called Single Malt and broke down. Not metaphorically. I cried.

He already knew the facts. We’d talked regularly, but what he hadn’t seen was what it was doing to me, what it had cost.

And to his credit, he didn’t try to rationalise it. He told me to shut my laptop, say nothing to anyone, and go offline. Immediately.

It turned out I wasn’t the first to fall. I was the third PM to burn out on this programme. No one fixed the foundation – they just switched the faces.

You can’t build delivery on denial.

Single Malt switched gears. Yes, the account’s profitability was essential to him. But so were his people. He handled it. Directly. At the CIO level.

The truth surfaced - the reports I’d written, the dependencies I’d flagged, the options I’d proposed. They’d all been sitting there, buried.

The Bulldozer was moved away – somewhere else in the business needed her “strong supplier management”.

A few weeks later, the project was quietly shut down.

Thanks to my reporting and audit trail, my consultancy received full payment for all work done (despite no value ever being delivered). 

The Realization

I thought I’d been placed in this role to deliver the project.

But I hadn’t. Not really.

I’d been placed there to keep things together - to hold tension in place just long enough for the wider account to stabilise, for relationships to deepen… until some senior conversation behind closed doors could quietly resolve it all in a way that kept everyone’s status, stories, and bonus packages intact.

At the time, I thought I was failing to communicate what was happening to my account director. But I wasn’t. He understood it entirely. It was part of his plan. He told me later I had been doing everything right, exactly what he needed.

He just didn’t realise I was burning out until it was too late.

The Conclusion

That was nearly a decade ago.

It was the most challenging project I’ve ever worked on - not because the delivery was complex, but because the system wouldn’t let truth move. I did everything I could. I protected the team. I told the truth. I burned out.

But it didn’t break me. It tempered me like steel.

It taught me that real project management isn’t about controlling the plan - it’s about navigating the politics, protecting your people, and holding the truth steady when everyone else is shifting.

Now, I can smell politics a mile away. I’ve seen the patterns. I’ve felt the burn.

I don’t seek out drama, but I ask better questions. And get real answers:

“What are we really doing here?”
“What’s at stake that’s bigger than this delivery?”
“Who needs this to look like it’s working - and why?”

I don’t escalate recklessly or go around people. I’m not a liability.
But I won’t run a project blind.

If I can’t surface a risk, I at least want to know it’s there and how it fits into the broader landscape.
If I’m being asked to steer a small boat through a storm, I want to know what else is in the water.

That’s how I manage now:
Not just with process, but with clarity.
Not just with confidence, but with consent.

That’s how I protect my delivery, my integrity, and my sanity.

And that’s how I know I’m still doing this job for the right reasons.

The Reflection

I still think about the others.

Would they recognise themselves in this story, or would they have a different truth? What pressures were they under that I couldn’t see at the time?

Towards the end, in a quiet moment, Bigfor once told me, “If it had just been you and me from the start, we could have made it work.” I believed him. Or maybe he was just very, very good at sounding believable.

Single Malt – despite it all, I liked him. He was the type of person who could move from storm to storm without ever getting wet. He was never going to be content with account management. He now sits on the board of a major UK public sector organisation.

The Bulldozer? I don’t know what became of them. Perhaps they discovered a system where their style was effective. Maybe they didn’t. Maybe they were just as affected as I was, hurled into a system designed to fail, and doing the best they could.

And The Quiet Director – I hope he’s okay. He deserved better.

When everything was crashing down around us, he started inviting me on walking meetings - just the two of us, away from the noise of the office. There was no pressure—just a quiet kind of curiosity. 

He’d ask careful, indirect questions - like he knew I was carrying something I couldn’t say. 

And he never pushed. 

He could feel there was a conflict in me. He didn’t fully understand it, but he respected it. 
He never put me in a position that would force a betrayal of either side.

It was one of the few relationships in that whole environment that felt safe, but also sad, because we both knew it wasn’t enough.

Looking back, I wonder if the reason these characters felt so vivid to me… is because I’ve carried parts of each of them.

The drive of the Bulldozer. The strategy of Bigfor. The restraint of the Quiet Director. Even the calm detachment of Single Malt.

There have been moments where I’ve walked their lines – even if I didn’t cross them. And now I watch for those traits in myself, as much as in others.

That’s what the project gave me. Not just lessons, but mirrors.

And that’s why it defined me.

Contributor Bio

Matt is a delivery-focused project and programme leader with a track record of turning complex transformation efforts into meaningful, lasting change. As founder of Symco Digital, he helps organisations bridge the gap between delivery and adoption, leading initiatives across cyber, data, digital, and enterprise systems. With deep experience in scoping high-stakes programs and mobilizing multidisciplinary teams, Matt brings sleeves-rolled-up pragmatism and a commercial lens to every engagement. Off the clock, he’s often mapping value flows on napkins and applying delivery principles to travel logistics and board game strategy.

Connect on LinkedIn: Matt Snell