-- An unwillingness by team members to support projects as required.

-- Failing to acknowledge project problems until it's too late for remedial action.

About 150 project managers in the audience supported the findings with numerous comments and a show of hands, indicating that they confront such situations regularly.

Maxfield reported that surveys and interviews of more than 800 project managers, as well as 150 hours of observations of corporate project activities, indicated that 80 percent of project managers routinely face arbitrary deadlines and inadequate resources that have no relationship to reality and only 18 percent who feel they can confront that situation effectively.

Maxfield pointed to the key difference between those who don't confront arbitrary deadlines and those who do: Those who don't "think of all the bad things that will happen if they stand up to their boss," he said. Those who do talk about their concerns "think of all the bad things that will happen if they don't stand up."