Sweat the Small Stuff

by: stacey - December 21st, 2011   Filed under: Project Management Add Comment

In project management, it is often the commonplace that trips us up.

People overlook easy things when faced with challenges. Some do it because they fear the difficult task, and thus their focus is on it and not the simple tasks before them. Some relish the challenge of the difficult. Those folks will overlook the simple stuff just the same.

Tough and difficult tasks in your projects will usually be done well- at least, to the best that your staff is capable of. They will bring their ‘A’ game, think, and pay attention. The tough tasks will draw attention and praise if done well. You don’t have to sweat these things- if your staff can do them, they will. Just put the right people on it and give it the right amount of attention.

The small things, on the other hand, can kill you. People assigned to the tough jobs will often slop their way through the easy tasks to get them out of the way. They’ll guess wildly at estimates, do the work too quickly, forget basic details and costs. Don’t let this happen to you. Sweat these details. Get the small work doublechecked, including the estimates. If possible, keep as much of the small work away from the people doing the heavy lifting on your project- not to help them do the hard work better, but to insure that the small work it done well.

Remember, a car will fail faster if you forget to tighten the lug nuts as it will if you don’t get the compression ratio of the engine just right. Always sweat the little things.

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Cheerleading is Important Too

by: stacey - December 20th, 2011   Filed under: Leadership Add Comment

Have you ever taken your car to a mechanic and found the mechanic to be in a horrible mood? Did you feel uncomfortable driving your car later, worried that he was too unhappy to do his job well?

Just as you don’t want a car fixed by a disgruntled mechanic, your customers will not want a product built by disgruntled employees. Unhappy people tend to focus on their unhappiness and fail to focus well on the task at hand. Worse, sometimes they focus their unhappiness on that task, messing it up on purpose. Even when they mean well, they work slowly, and they make mistakes.

What does all this add up to for you as a manager? Morale matters. One of your jobs as a manager is to lead people in performing activities quickly, effectively, and efficiently. Unhappy employees do none of these things. You should take an active role in motivating your team. When problems arise, take an active role in solving them. When an employee is beyond your help, though, you must recognize this and react to it. This may involve shifting responsibilities temporarily, or it may involve taking more permanent action. Either way, morale matters. Raise it when you can, deal with it when you cannot.

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The Way Out of Your Mess is One Step at a Time

by: stacey - December 19th, 2011   Filed under: Leadership, Management Add Comment

This is a very old, old maxim, but I think it’s worth repeating.  Every experienced PM and manager has heard this before:  the more complicated the problem you face, the smaller the steps you should break it down into to solve the problem.  This applies to everything from organizational and cultural problems to basic software design to building a deck in your back yard, and everywhere in between.

It’s worth repeating and thinking about because, simply, every one of us forgets this sometimes.  You have a big, complex problem and next thing you know there’s a whole committee of people in a room holding a meeting and beating the issue to death- in the mean time, no one’s working on anything.  90% of the time, the actual solution is find the first step of solving the problem, set someone to work on that, then pull a plan together to solve the rest of the problem- in the smallest, easiest to solve pieces as are possible.

I recommend that, if you have anything in your office to remind you of something you should think about every day, this should be it:  when in doubt, eat the elephant one bite at a time.  Remembering this daily will help save you months and months of work over your career.

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