StoryboardPM

We tend to think we must choose between a dichotomy of options, but what if both options are let’s say, “not the best” (Sounds like the U.S. Presidential Candidates…but I digress.). Why can’t we leaders and frontline workers meet each other somewhere in the middle with regular checkoffs?

There are a couple concepts here I chose to highlight: 1) You can’t monitor and control if you don’t have metrics and measurements to begin with, and 2) You are not leading effectively if you are too “hands off” or too “hands on” with monitoring and controlling.

Here is my takeaway #30 from one of the most useful practical books in my field, “Project Management for the Unofficial Project Manager”:

30) “Sometimes the project leader cannot think the implications through because the basics to measure against are not in place, and the project becomes a free-for-all.”

“Project leaders often stumble because of two opposite management approaches: abandonment and micromanagement.”

“(Some do one or the other.) Still others do both–they abandon the team for a while and then dive back in to play the hero when things go wrong. Effective project managers steadily monitor progress and control the project to stop it from drifting into chaos.”

“Monitor and Control surrounds all the other process groups. Why? Because if we have followed all the guidelines in the other groups, we are already monitoring and controlling with vigilance.”

Note: This comes from Chapter 6 “Monitoring and Controlling the Project: Keep Your Sanity or Lose Your Mind?” (pages 163)

I have been on both sides of the equation as a project leader and as a team member where our teams did not understand the advantage of clear success criteria and KPI’s and monitoring and controlling throughout. Here are a couple of those stories.

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STORY TIME:

(Story 1) I experienced an exciting global initiative. We launched a new affiliate business to expand our capabilities. We rapidly got it up and running just in time for launch, and then it became clear we didn’t have the right metrics to measure our success against. Our new staff was trained and operating, but without the right KPI’s for our training and for their work activities they were not fully brought up-to-speed to operate at capacity. It became a free-for-all in the fix-it projects that followed.

(Story 2) I experienced another work environment where every project turned into an emergency. We would work through a lot of work activities in isolation and the team members were expected to put the plane together as it was taking off of the runway so-to-speak. The autonomy to figure things out was great, right up until it wasn’t. Projects are a team sport. It was a sort of “tough love” or “learn to swim” technique, which may work for siloed operations, but for a cross-functional collaboration it doesn’t work! Leaders would show up at the tail end of a process, having not monitored and controlled anything all along (even when I would fill out and turn in a running list of outlying issues that needed escalation and decisions made before we could finalize anything).

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If your organization is employing any of the 3 bad techniques I mentioned, you are going about it all wrong. You will continue to have the same problems over and over. If you have to resort to “hero ball”, then you are at a level 1 in project management maturity; it is stifling everyone’s potential as well as the possibilities for your business’ success and growth.