Assign a single capable person to serve as Project Manager (PM) responsible for the entire project through to completion if one is not already assigned or if the one assigned has proven ineffective. The PM should be someone who has previously been successful in similar circumstances in terms of project scope, scale, and complexity. If someone with requisite experience is not available to serve as PM then arrange for the experienced person to serve as a close adviser to the PM until a new plan is in place and performance relative to the new plan is on track.
Have the PM work with the client, the project team, management, and advisers to pull together a revised plan.Review the plan thoroughly with the PM, the project team, and with outside stakeholders, including the client, to be sure the path to completion, all the way through to client acceptance, is well formulated, understood, agreed to, and sensible.
If a team member performing poorly relative to expectation, the team’s leader should first make sure basic tenets for success have been established using best contracting and governance practices.
As the team’s leader, ensure that you:
Know what the team counts on the team member to do
Believe s/he has the ability do it.
Want him/her to do it.
Validate that s/he:
Knows what the team is counting on him/her to do
Believes s/he has the ability do it.
Wants to do it.
Verify s/he has what is needed for success; including resources (e.g., time, money, space), knowledge, experience, systems, and access to experienced advisors.
Ensure there is sufficient incentive to perform up to expectation.
Provide governance; i.e., every month or so, ask him/her to tell you:
Click for a PDF slide deck on how to Contract & Govern for success.
One of a leader’s most important jobs is to get and stay clear about what it is that s/he is counting on from each team member. Once the leader is clear, the message must be communicated to each team member. Often, leaders fail to engage in a rich communication along these lines, apparently because they assume that team members are somehow supposed to figure out for themselves exactly what is expected.
The steps presented in the slides available by clicking the above icon and in the following text make explicit a conversation that otherwise plays-out inside of the heads of those involved. When the conversation is explicit the leader and team member get on the same page and dramatically increase the odds of high-performance and fulfilled expectations.
When a project goes awry and no longer performing according to plan: