When the summer sun beats down, there’s always someone in the family who reminds you to put on your sunscreen. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a way to easily avoid getting burned at work? There is. It’s called project management.
Grab a bottle of water, put on your baseball cap, and think about project management as SPF 45 for business.
Following are seven ways that project management can help you avoid getting burned at work:
1. Set expectations with a project agreement. Don’t skip the project agreement because you're pressed for time, or you think the project is too inconsequential. It’s often the small projects that can unexpectedly erupt and catch us off guard because we were thinking, “This is going to be an easy one.” Project agreements help to eliminate unnecessary conflict as objectives, expectations, timelines, and roles and responsibilities get clearly defined. If some team members are working virtually, it’s important to update the project agreement regularly, and post it to the collaborative work environment or e-mail it to the team.
2. Get clear contracts in place with vendors and partners. Make sure you have clarified all contracts with any vendors, consultants, or partners before you kick off the project. Don’t make assumptions about skill levels and reliability if you’ve never worked together before. Review and discuss deadlines and deliverables to make sure the entire team is clear about its responsibilities. Although it’s commonplace today to work with outside consultants, problems often arise when we work with someone for the first time. A good rule of thumb is to set your first deadline early on, so you can assess the progress of everyone on the team and make any necessary corrections quickly.
3. Schedule regular communication. It’s important to have a regular time for reporting progress and potential pitfalls to the team. This keeps people on track and gives everyone the discipline of a team check-in. It’s ideal if there is a standing time every week or every month, depending on your project milestones. Remember to build in time for feedback and coaching.
4. Set rules of responsiveness. It’s important to define what the rules of responsiveness are for your culture. This is especially true when the team is new or you’ve added new people on board. How quickly are people expected to return an e-mail, an instant message, or a phone call? What is your protocol when people are out of the office or on vacation? If you’re in a customer-service environment, it’s important to have clear expectations regarding how to respond to all customer inquiries.
5. Don’t bury the lead. Have you ever missed a deadline or important information because you didn’t read beyond the first paragraph? Train your team to use e-mail effectively, and lead with what is most important. Also, encourage people to use the old-fashioned phone when something isn’t getting done via e-mail. The human voice is a powerful tool in the world of e-mail.
6. Create standards that build a cohesive culture. What are your standards of quality? How do you define excellence? What does your brand mean to each employee? Making sure everyone knows the answers to those three questions is important in reaching your goals and getting the results you want.
7. Take hiring seriously. We’ve all made bad hires, and often it’s because we neglected due diligence. We had a project, and we needed it done, and we jumped. Take the time to drill down on the skills, past work performance, and references of candidates and contractors. During the interview, make sure you’re listening more than you’re talking. People will reveal themselves if they are given the opportunity. Develop questions that require thinking so you can get a sense of how this person would approach a problem. Don’t ask questions that people expect such as, “What are your strengths and weaknesses?” Instead try, “Tell me about a work experience where you failed and how you handled it?”
So, if you’re working on a team and the temperature is rising, make sure you use your project management skills to protect yourself and keep your project on track. As with sunscreen, don’t be afraid to apply your project management know-how liberally.
Michelle LaBrosse is an entrepreneurial powerhouse with a penchant for making success easy, fun, and fast. She is the founder of Cheetah Learning, a global firm employing more than 100 people that specializes in combining accelerated learning and project management to help people achieve their goals faster than they ever before imagined. She is the author of the Cheetah Success Series, and a prolific blogger whose mission is to bring project management to the masses. She is a graduate of the Harvard Business School’s Owner President Manager’s program and also holds aerospace and mechanical engineering degrees from Syracuse University and the University of Dayton.
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