Make Sure Everyone Really Knows How

There’s a tendency to assign as reasons for project failures things like lack of clarity in the assignment, blurring of roles and responsibilities, insufficient resources, late changes in the specs, too much to do in too little time.  That may be because people feel safe listing these blame-it-on-the-organization reasons when the job’s not getting done.

But another reason might be that someone just didn’t know what to do or how to do it, and didn’t feel comfortable saying so and asking for help.

It’s tough to say you don’t get it.  And even tougher to say you don’t have all the skills needed to get it done without some help.  Part of this is the inherent conflict between today’s workplace rhetoric that emphasizes the importance of collaboration and teamwork and project management’s emphasis on individual accountability, and performance appraisal and compensation systems that recognize and reward primarily individual contributions.

Other powerful influences are pervasive motivational mantras like “you-can-do-anything-you-put-your-mind-to” and “fake-it-till-you-make-it” that tempt people to commit to projects and tasks for which they’re not really prepared.

Part of the manager’s job is to recognize these forces and take steps to make sure they don’t jeopardize the work.

It’s critical to the success of any project to determine as early as possible — and at critical points along the way — whether everyone has the tools and know-how required to do the job.

Article after article describes the 5, 10, or 20 things a manager has to be good at to succeed in today’s workplace.  There is none more important than for him or her to be an expert on the behaviors that are happening, moment-by-moment, when things are going well, and which associates have skills in particular areas.  A manager should be able to identify with confidence the associates who have demonstrated the highest level of X or Y capability, and be able to use that information to bring the right combinations of talents to each stage of every project.

Then, once the project gets going, the manager has to be very attentive, staying engaged and communicating, listening and watching for little cues that things may not be going as they should be, and trying to identify the reasons.  Perceiving and responding to these early warnings makes it a lot easier to take corrective action to keep the project on track.