Effective
Engineering
e-Newsletter
– 4/02/2009
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(www.effectiveeng.com).
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eN-090402:
The Best Laid Plans … and Then Life Happens!
By Tom
Dennis – President, Effective Engineering
[tdennis@effectiveeng.com]
You’ve been working hard at planning and carrying out your new project.
You’ve put a great team in place (see
eN-090305 – Hire Adults, Expect Results!). You’ve put together
a great project plan that takes into account contingencies and plans for the
unexpected. You’ve thought about the known knowns, the known
unknowns, the unknown knowns, and even the unknown unknowns
(see
eN-041104 – Project Planning: Plan Based On What You Do Know, and On What
You Don’t!), or so you think. You think you’ve got everything
covered … and then life happens! A critical person on your team gets sick
or injured in an accident. The spouse or child of key person suddenly
becomes seriously ill, and the care of that person takes priority over
everything else. The downturn in the economy forces funding and support for
your project to be significantly cut back or even put on hold. Your primary
(or worse, only) customer decides they want to go another way or that they
want something significantly different from what you had planned. A
technology you were depending upon develops problems that make its use
uncertain, impractical, or impossible. A huge storm hits and power is out
in the entire area for weeks.
In work and in life the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. You
can try to anticipate the unknown, and whatever you do in this regard can
often help greatly, but all of your advance planning and anticipation
generally won’t cover personal emergencies, company or customer changes,
catastrophes, or acts of God. What do you do? How do you keep your head
while others around you have seemingly lost their minds? How do you
regroup, rethink, replan, and restart? What can you use and what must you
scrap?
If you have indeed put together a great team (see also
eN-081002 -- Pigasus – When Pigs Fly!), then it is time for that
team to show their true mettle. They need to come together when times are
not good, when it means more than discomfort, when it may mean survival. In
some cases it may mean survival or delay of the project, but depending on
the circumstances it could also mean personal survival, group survival,
department survival, company survival, or even societal survival. Sometimes
it may not even be survivable.
OK, enough for predictions of doom and destruction. Let’s take things one
at a time and think about what can be done in some specific situations.
First, let’s take the case of the sudden absence of a key member of the team
for any of the possible circumstances illustrated above. If the team has
really been properly structured, the project should not fail due to the loss
of one person. There should be sufficient cross training among members of
the group such that knowledge is sufficiently spread and others should be
able to step up to the plate to carry the load of that key person. I
understand that this may be very difficult if your team is small with
diverse critical skills, but as the leader of the team, you need to ensure
that the project doesn’t suddenly grind to a halt should something bad
happen to one member of the team. If this is not the case, then your “great”
project plan isn’t really so great and you’ve got work to do right now to
incorporate this all too realistic scenario into your project planning.
This would fall into the category of a “known unknown” – you know it
could happen, but you don’t know the impact … unless you plan for it in
advance. So do that! Think now specifically about what you would do
should one or more of your people suddenly not be there, and then do it.
Make sure other team members can carry on the work and continue to make
effective progress.
Next, let’s take the case of business conditions forcing a cutback in
funding and/or staffing. The first thing to do in this situation is to
examine the situation forcing the cutbacks and objectively rate your project
in realistic terms of its impact on the financial situation. If you believe
that your project can make an immediate or near-term impact on the financial
situation of the company, then make this known, not in an emotional plea,
but in a facts-based presentation. Objectively demonstrate the benefits and
the costs and show how continuation of your project can help to improve the
near-term financial situation. Be prepared to be told that it simply isn’t
enough, but also be prepared to more forcefully make your case if you truly
believe it. If you don’t see direct ways your project can help immediately
or in the near-term, but you see ways that you could apply your and your
team’s efforts in other ways to make an immediate positive impact, then
present a proposal that demonstrates benefits and costs of what you and your
team can do to help, and let the executive team decide whether or not this
makes sense. If your project or team still can’t make an immediate or
near-term impact on the financial situation of the company, then you
probably need to accept the cutbacks and see what else you or your team can
do to best help improve the financial situation. That may mean cutbacks to
your team or even to you. If it does, try not to take it personally. If
the company dies, everyone loses their jobs.
Next, let’s take the case of your primary customer deciding they want to go
another way or with another company’s products. If this customer is
currently a significant portion of your company’s revenue, such a decision
has far broader impact on your company than just to your project or team.
It spans virtually every organization in your company. If your customer
wants to go another way but stay with your company, then there will be a
flurry of activity to determine what can be done quickly to address this
desired change in direction. Do whatever you can do to help, and show
flexibility and an ability to quickly react and propose solutions, and not
complaints, to help quickly remedy the situation. If the customer wants to
go with another company’s products, it can mean life or death for the
company or, sometimes worse yet, your company living in limbo. This almost
certainly will lead to major layoffs and a significant restructuring of the
business. Much of this is often beyond your control, but if you believe you
can see ways with current, modified, or planned products to rescue this
customer loss, make your case immediately to the key players in the
company. This will show your flexibility, initiative, innovation, and
determination to help rescue a bad situation. Still, the situation may not
be recoverable, and you and many others in your company may be adversely
affected.
Finally, let’s take the case of acts of God – storm, fire, flood, etc. Your
company should have well considered disaster recovery plans in place. Make
sure they do, and understand them thoroughly. If disaster strikes, there
may not be a lot you and your team can do, other than to offer your services
to do whatever is needed to help get your company back up and running. This
may mean tough manual labor or offering technical know-how others may not
have. Do whatever you can to help your company and yourself. It is simply
the right thing to do.
So, do all you can to plan to the best of your ability. Try to incorporate
contingencies and uncertainties into your planning. Think about reasonably
realistic situations, such the sudden loss of a key person, temporarily or
long term, by making sure no one person is irreplaceable. Think through as
thoroughly as possible the known knowns, known unknowns,
unknown knowns, and unknown unknowns. Still, even after you do
your very best, you can start with the best laid
plans … and then life happens!
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© 2009 Effective Engineering Consulting Services, All Rights Reserved
