Pop's Garage - Finishing Projects

Phew! Hot times at the parent's old house. The temperature was high too.

Today's post is about finishing projects, or the last steps before the ending. I call it preventing the three Cs, conflcit, confusion and chaos.

For years I led performance improvement-type projects (quality management, reengineering, performance management, balanced scorecard), the kinds of projects that cause big changes in how business operations are run (new SOPs) and/or how performance is measured (affecting salary increases and promotions). Implementing the project team's plans often caused conflict and chaos, or at least confusion, amoung affected employees. But that is not what I care about, now anyway.

Today I care about preventing conflict inside the team itself.

Projects go through phases. One of the most dangerous project phases is near the end of the preparation, just prior to implementation (or presentation to the powers that be). After geting past the initial confusion at project start teams settle into a routine, almost a boring, "we are doing this to achieve that mentality. Nothing dangerous there.

One day though, all the datum has been collected, the possibilities brainstormed and implementation plans made, almost. It is the almost part that triggers the problems.

By now the team has been together for a while, and routine datum collecting and idea bouncing has shifted to data analyzing and idea hardening. It is a confusing time, bringing everything together. Not just that choices must be made (making some winners and most losers) but that project ennui is at a peak, "won't this damn project ever end?" a common feeling.

Now is when frustrations built up over time are no longer are quite-so-easy to dismiss. Tempers fray, words are said and arguments take place. When implementation starts team members have other, "new" things to think about and do, but in the dog days just before implementing there are only old jobs to do and old ideas to discuss. Again. And again.

Now is when the team leader truly earns his/her salary. Why? Because if team members have a frustration level of X, leader's frustration ix X+10. Or +100. The easiest thing to do is to give in and when team members offer up frustration to answer them with frustration +10. The urge to lash out, to say things you've thought and felt for months, is string, a seductive siren calling you to, paraphrasing Nancy Regan, just let go.

Don't! Now is when project managers need to be calm. If you are calm they will be, or might. If you show you are frenzied, harried and frustrated, they will be too. No fun, for anyone.