Tag: recovery

Emergency exit? Make it organised

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As deconfinments start making room around the world, with some degree of clarity, it is time to put in place project management measures for an organised, to the extent possible, return to office work.

Over the past week I kept getting fellow colleagues questions about exiting this emergency. While my advice matched the situation of each particular project, I noticed are a number of common approaches across industries.

Here are 9 tips for an organised exit:

1. Focus on team members. People will come out of this changed in one way or another. Bear that in mind and pile up on your compassion resources. You may also want to know more about their families and the struggles they went through during this period.

2. Make use of your notes over the past two months. Did you notice new skills and abilities of team members? Is perhaps a rethinking of your traditional project roles timely? For example, if a team leader became more productive during the confinement, he/she might be wanting a more executive role. Or if a software developer manifested leadership skills, he/she might be ready for a team leader role. Did the project assistant outgrow his/her role and is ready for a different role? Look around with your talent-seeking eyes.

3. If you had to cut corners in procurement, which I hope you did not, make sure proper justifications are on record and well filed. Integrity should never be compromised, even in times of emergencies.

4. If you and your teams return to work, you may want to get to there first, to greet and welcome them. If it is your responsibility, make sure all safety and hygiene conditions are met. If there is an Organisation-wide policy, make sure all team members are aware about it. If your team returns to a location different from yours, you may want to order something online to greet them. It could be as symbolic as a new office plant or coffee from a nearby coffeeshop. Good for local business. Great for team’s morale.

5. Revisit the communication channels and see together with your teams which are to be kept and which will be ditched.

6. Make plans. And make plans B. Here is still a lot of uncertainty around the situation. Planning to hold meetings and go on business trips? Leave them for later and watch for border policies of countries of your clients. Some countries have reintroduced visas (e.g. Kazakhstan). Check on those as well.

7. Have a clear plan for priorities on the critical path of the project. Check on your first milestone after deconfinment. Communicate clearly to your sponsor, clients and other important partners.

8. Scan the environment for eventual “under water mines”. Video and audio was great in remote work. Yet these means of communication are prone to breed misunderstandings and frustrations. Simply because the screen makes it harder to interpret visual clues, such as body posture and physical gestures. Make sure there is no conflict in the air. Or if there is, manage it pro-actively.

9. Decide on what kind of leader you want to be from now on: an effective manager who gets the job done or an innovative anticipator?

Project/change management: five main take aways

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As we navigate change during these times of moving targets, many among us turn to some of the change management tools for inspiration.

From my interaction with my fellow colleagues over the past month, many projects managers adopt the change management mode in full or in part.

While the process is multi-faceted and our learning is specific to projects we currently manage, I noticed five main common take-aways:

1. The success of change management will depend on how prepared you were. You’ll be grateful if you have no delays, backlog and no red signals on the critical paths.

2. Change management will rely on the same project’s resources, or even less resources. Donors and sponsor will not give to on-going projects any additional funds. You might find yourself finding creating ways of doing change management with no or very little funds. You might want to join forces with other projects to share the costs.

3. For internal projects, depending on the organisation’s policy and the labour legislation of the country where the project is located, the project manager might face the challenge of team’s downsizing and, consequently, the reallocation of roles and responsibilities.

4. As a project manager, you’ll be now more than ever grateful for the communication trainings you took and tips you learned along your path. The success of the change management depends vitally on timely, clear, empathic and honest communication so that everyone feels that we all in this together.

5. You’ll learn that acceptance of change will happen differently. If before we tended to engage in endless discussions and find excuses to introducing (or not) change, acceptance will happen quicker. This in turn, places much of the responsibility on those who lead the change management.

Top five most frequent questions in time of crisis

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These past two weeks, I have been contacted for advice on what to do with projects in these new and unexpected circumstances. Crisis management, here we come.

While my advice and tips matched the variety of situations the projects were in, I noticed several common take aways:

1. Damage control and remaining in control are strongly interdependent. Analyse what you can control and acknowledge that you cannot control the pandemic and its extent. Unless you are a project manager in a hospital in an epicenter.

2. Analyse your project’s work plan/charts and be honest about what can be done in the period announced by the authorities if your country is in a confinement/quarantine. Have a plan B and be ready to change it, as things evolve. Communicate it well to all concerned: sponsor, stakeholders, providers, consultants.

3. Check all your contracts, the obligations part in particular, both yours and the other parties’. Now it’s the time for forgotten or overlooked things to come to light. Get the help of your organisation’s lawyers, if needed. Check the clauses on causes for suspension and delays for payments. Notify the other party, if required so. For new contracts, check what you can agree on and sign electronically.

4. Now it’s the time to move online if you have not done it yet. There is a variety to choose from, from Trello, Monday, Basecamp to Zoom and clouds. Make the technology work for you.

5. Teams will watch you for cues. So, control yourself, by distinguishing your fears from facts. Acknowledge team members’ fears. Offer a mirror of calm. Help when you can. Summon all your empathy and compassion.

The seven habits of mentally strong project managers

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Over the last two decades, I worked with numerous project managers from different industries and the ones who are rock strong share a number of things in common. Now more than ever these habits will be tested and new ones will be developed. I’ll leave these ones below for now:

1. Mentally strong project managers practice self-awareness. They know that mental strength is their choice which requires commitment and a big sense of humour. They prefer self-irony to ego.

2. As they are building on self-awareness, they remain pro-active. They will pick up the phone first. They own the mistakes and failure. They act responsibly towards the team, the client and the sponsor.

3. They practice humility. They are humble enough to acknowledge that there are things they cannot control. They will however take seriously damage control. They refocus their attention on the things they can control and take the team through this. They care about what the team and the client thinks. The rest is a facebook thread to them.

4. They say “Hello, gorgeous!” to the unexpected, and projects by definition are plentiful of those. They know that even with the best of planning skills, there is a great deal of unchartered waters. Mentally strong project managers are as flexible as a willow and turn adversity into opportunity to bring return on investment.

5. They are best pals with risk management. They will ponder, calculate, analyse, involve others. They will put people first and thus sleep well at night.

6. They put relationships first. They know that reports, deliveries and milestones will become past. Relationships last.

7. They keep things in perspective and share it with others. They will respond to a colleague’s call for help and give the best of advice they can.