I recently did some project management consulting at a large medical device company. My responsibility was to manage a team to complete a large and evolving project scope with an agressive deadline that could not be changed due to regulatory constraints. For this project, the core team was very small. The other team members came in and out, as necessary. And of course, all the team members had more on their plates than they had time or energy to deal with. I’ve dealt with this many times in my career, so this was nothing new. This project, though, was unique for me in a couple aspects.
I’ve heard about companies where people attend meeting after meeting, day after day. But this was the first company I’ve worked with where this culture is alive and well. To get stakeholders in a room to make key decisions often took weeks (and I mentioned the agressive timeline).
Another unique aspect of this project was that very few of the team members had authority to make decisions to move forward. However, every team member had the authority to put the brakes on. One example: the project required changes to product label formats. I scheduled a meeting with the appropriate (or so I thought) stakeholders. We discussed the various options and made a decision. I followed up with meeting notes, action items, etc. A day later, I was told that we could not move forward and that we needed to meet again to discuss options. A couple weeks later, we met again (same players), discussed the same options, and came to the same conclusion. Meeting notes, action items distributed. A week later, I was told another meeting was needed to discuss this topic–this time with people higher up the food chain. This time, the decisions were different and finalized. That process took WAY LONGER than it should have.
Maybe a consultant who is paid by the hour should salivate at this kind of “opportunity”. I didn’t. I strive for efficiency, and this project was not efficient!
If you’re reading this and have project management responsibilities and/or have resources reporting to you, here are a few pieces of advice I offer:
- Define a core team, representing the critical functions for the project. Empower this team to make decisions.
- Stop having so many meetings. Start doing something.
- Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. They happen on every project. Quickly learn from these, correct the mistakes, and move on.
- Communicate, communicate, communicate. And I’m not talking about only sending an email.