Jenny Warila, Author at CW Training Consulting

Three Questions to Assess Your Risk of Project Cancellation

One of the biggest frustrations I’ve experienced as a program manager is seeing my project get canceled. It’s painful to have put thought, time and energy into what I believed was an important initiative for the company, only to have it be deprioritized, defunded, and scrapped. Has this ever happened to you? And how can you protect your projects from project cancellation?

Some reasons for project cancellation are out of your control. Maybe the business environment has changed, or a competitor has moved into your domain. Perhaps the project was counting on a technical breakthrough that didn’t pan out or an external partner that couldn’t follow through.

On the other hand, some of the power is in your hands. Are you running the project effectively? For example, are the goals and vision of the project clear? Do you publish and meet most of your milestones? Listen effectively to your project team and keep your stakeholders up to date with progress and challenges? Manage risks, scope creep and budget constraints?

If you’ve got a good handle on the project execution, there still may be a risk of project cancellation. This can happen if the project is not aligned well with the overall priorities of the organization or if it’s competing with other projects that are more critical to business success. To determine the risk from this internal misalignment, ask yourself these three questions.

Question 1: How does your project contribute to the strategic direction of your organization?

If there’s a list of prioritized projects, does your project appear on it, or contribute meaningfully to one that does? If you don’t have a clear idea of the strategic priorities of your organization, it’s absolutely worth your time to track it down. It may require a conversation with your manager, or the product or marketing manager in your domain. Understanding how your project contributes, and showing that tie to strategic objectives at every project review and conversation you have with stakeholders, will go a long way toward keeping your project prioritized and funded.

Question 2: What level of commitment do you have from managers of needed resources?

I once worked on a project that had a strong strategic tie to the company’s objectives of saving money in server hosting. However, no matter what I did, I couldn’t get the manager of a critical team to provide the people resources I needed to execute the project. The project soon fell apart, because no matter how strategic the work was, it could not succeed without the properly skilled people working on it. Without buy-in from the people who control your resources, your project is at risk. Get that buy-in, or raise the issue with your sponsor promptly. (You can read more about this project failure and what I learned from it in this blog article.)

Question 3: What do your stakeholders think about your project?

Declining stakeholder support is a key risk factor. Your project sponsor may still be on board with your project, but everyone else may have started to doubt the business case, or the technical foundations, or just have moved on to the next business challenge. Keep your stakeholders informed, showcase successes, highlight that strong strategic alignment, and if you notice waning interest, ask about it. Enlist your sponsor in helping uncover the reasons for the declining support. It’s better to cancel the project quickly if the project is doomed than let it drag on wasting your team members’ time, energy and enthusiasm.

Project cancellations happen. Sometimes it’s the right thing, even if it’s painful. Ask yourself these three questions regarding your projects and you’ll have a better sense of the risk of cancellation. You can either shore things up or move decisively to cancel it.

If you enjoyed these tips, sign up for our newsletter and don’t miss a future post or learning event announcement.

CW Training and Consulting specializes in hands-on, interactive project management workshops - either off the shelf or customized to your needs. Contact Us and we will help you find the right learning solution for you and your business.

Project Management - 01/27/2025

Effective Meetings: Take Control of Unruly Meetings

Meetings are an inescapable part of modern working life, and leading effective meetings is a powerful leadership skill. Clients tell us one of the biggest meeting difficulties they have is keeping control of discussions amid challenging behaviors.

Here are some statements from some clients who shared what they want to learn to make their meetings more effective:

"Master how to tactfully and gracefully maintain (or regain) control of the meeting when one person has derailed it."
"Tools to diffuse heated discussions like disagreements on next steps, passionate points of view or tangents that derail the agenda."
"Move the meeting in the right direction without making anyone feel unheard."

Do those ring a bell? Learn to disarm difficult meeting behaviors using our three-step process that will elevate your meetings from chaotic to collaborative.

STEP ONE: Recognize nonproductive meeting behaviors

Working for years with dynamic, growing organizations, we’ve identified five archetypes that represent some of the most common difficult meeting behaviors. In fact, we get nods of recognition and sheepish raised hands when we ask who sees these archetypes in themselves.

Here are the first three archetypes. Do you recognize yourself in them? Could a change in behavior make for more effective meetings?

👉 Do you tend to hold back in meetings even when you have information or an opinion that can help? We call that archetype The Watcher.

👉 Personally, I tend to repeat or restate what others say, imagining I’m lending support or helping others to better understand. Being The Repeater might be helpful sometimes, but it can quickly get annoying.

👉 How about those who share their opinion insistently, forgetting to listen to other voices? That’s The Know-It-All.

When we see our own opportunities for improvement, we can work improving and even find compassion for others' behavior.

STEP TWO: Rein in unruly behavior with judicious meeting facilitation

Most of the survey statements above reflect a desire for high-quality facilitation skills and tools. We have facilitation guidelines that target the five archetypes.

For example, how do you regain control of the room with folks who interrupt and digress? We call this fourth archetype The Off-Tracker because they have trouble staying on topic and may dominate the conversation. We’ve got a three-part solution that works with anyone who tends to interrupt or dominate the discussion:

Interrupt with tact. “Let me stop you there” or “Hold that thought” lets you retake control with grace.
Validate using a “parking lot.” Make sure the person feels heard with phrases like “That’s a good idea” or “Interesting thought.” Then capture that idea or thought on a whiteboard or in a shared document that you return to at the end of the meeting. For each point listed on the parking lot, decide whether it's still an issue to be assigned for followup.
Redirect with your agenda. Always have a desired meeting outcome and an agenda you can point to, ideally with time allocated for each topic. With an agenda, you can say “We better get back to the topic at hand before we run out of time.” However, as a meeting facilitator, you can let the conversation continue if you think it’s important to the meeting’s desired outcomes.

STEP THREE: Leverage the strengths and talents of each meeting behavior archetype

Flip the script to elevate your meetings into high-performing collaborations. By consciously focusing on the constructive attributes of each archetype, you create opportunities for all your participants to shine.

For example, let’s take a look at The Naysayer, our final archetype. This archetype looks for the downside in an opportunity, the flaws in an argument, and the worst case in a situation. They may never show enthusiasm for an idea or offer constructive suggestions for improvement. What might be the strengths and talents of this behavior?

Consider rebranding The Naysayer as The Questioner—the one who excels at asking questions that no one else considers. Harnessing their ability to find flaws, poke holes in ideas, and identify risks and downsides can make your solutions better. They just want to make sure someone has heard and considered their concerns. They often don’t need to know how their concerns are being addressed. You might ask them to quantify a risk so you understand its likelihood - or ask for possible solutions if the risk warrants it. When asked, they can have creative and effective solutions to the issues they raise.

There you have it—a bit of our secret sauce to turn those unruly meetings into collaborative win-win sessions.

Resources to lead more effective meetings

🚩 Go more deeply into how to lead effective meetings with tools, templates and tips to manage those pesky meeting behaviors in our self-paced course, "Take Control of Unruly Meetings."

🚩 Use this free downloadable resource, The Flipside in Meetings, to help you recognize these meeting archetypical behaviors. It includes tips on how to disarm them and leverage the strength in each.

🚩 Go to our Learning Library for more articles that will help you improve your effectiveness at work.

If you enjoyed these tips, sign up for our newsletter so you don’t miss a future post or learning event announcement.

CW Training and Consulting specializes in hands-on, interactive project management skills boosting workshops - either off the shelf or customized to your needs. Contact Us and we will help you find the right learning solution for you and your business.

Effective Meetings - 11/18/2023

Say Goodbye to "Bunch Ball" Decision-Making

Does decision-making in your organization sometimes look like “bunch ball”—you know, when young soccer players swarm the ball, don’t pass, and don’t play positions? Debbie and I have worked with organizations large and small where too many people want to be involved in every decision.

The result, as you may have experienced, can be frustrating, painful decision-making. If you recognize any of these symptoms in your organization, you may be suffering from “bunch ball” decision-making:

Decision delay: Getting input and buy-in from everyone takes forever, possibly without a clear decision owner.
Decision swirl: Decisions are made but then revisited, sometimes more than once.
Decision tunnel vision: Decisions are made in silos, without understanding the upstream and downstream impacts.

So what’s the winning game plan? How do you help your organization outgrow “bunch ball” decision-making and become World Cup decision-makers? As with successful soccer teams, everyone has to know their position and play it well. It’s all about roles and responsibilities!

Meet the Players

Of the several decision-making frameworks we’ve seen in action, we use a Driver, Approver, Consultants, and Informed (DACI) model for its simplicity and flexibility in laying out each role’s responsibilities. (Note: This is a scalable process. You can identify roles quickly, often in your head, with no burdensome overhead.)

The Driver guides the decision-making process.
The Approver makes the final call and is accountable for the outcome.
The Consultants provide data and advice to ensure a sound decision.
The Informed are told about the decision but do not have a say.

For DACI to work, everyone must play their position. “Stay in your lane!” was what one of our clients exhorted. Beyond that general principle, here are some tips for each role in a moderate-to-complex decision.

If you’re the Driver, you make sure the decision moves forward. Engage the Approver. Cast a wide net to ensure all Consultants are identified and then ruthlessly edit down the list to only key Consultants. Get clear on how decision choices will be identified and evaluated. In complex decisions, you may also be the one to collect input from the Consultants and evaluate them for the Approver. Your efforts are critical to getting a timely, effective decision made.

If you’re the Approver, be available to the Driver to review DACI roles, discuss the context and desired outcomes of the decision, help identify evaluation criteria to be used, review the Consultants’ input, and whatever else is important for reaching a sound decision. You’re accountable for the decision and its outcome, so help the Driver help you.

If you’re a Consultant, remember that you don’t have veto power. You provide your expertise, opinion, data, or other input and trust the Approver to consider your contribution in combination with the rest of the input collected.

Informed? You’re only a spectator even if you care deeply about the outcome. When you hear the decision, you’ll want to model acceptance and responsiveness.

Sizing Your DACI

Of course, you’ll want to adapt DACI to your specific needs. Like in a simple backyard scrimmage, sometimes one person plays multiple roles. In a limited-scope decision such as a department website redesign, the Driver and Approver could be the same person. For a big, complex decision like where to relocate an office or in which market to first launch a product, there might be a lot of information to collect, many people involved, and the need for a dedicated Driver to manage the process and provide a recommendation to the Approver.

SCORE: Your Team: 1 Painful Decision-Making: 0

When the players identified in the DACI framework work effectively together, your decisions are made without delay, are revisited only with good reason, and balance all stakeholder needs. DACI for the win!

We’ve got a wealth of resources, activities, and workshops designed to help improve your organization’s decision-making. If you enjoyed these tips, sign up for our newsletter so you don’t miss a future post or learning event announcement.

CW Training and Consulting specializes in hands-on, interactive project management related skills boosting workshops - either off the shelf or customized to your needs. Contact Us and we'll help you find the right learning solution for you and your business.

Decision Making - 05/02/2023

Caught by Surprise by a Sure Thing: Learning from Failure

A number of years ago, while working at a large, successful software company, I took on the role of project leader for what I expected to be a fun, challenging, high-value-add technology project. My sponsors for the project were the chief technology officer and the chief information officer, and the effort was going to save the company $35M in cost avoidance. The technical challenge (untangling a root-ball of legacy web servers and upgrading or decommissioning each one) was the nut to crack, I told myself. With sponsorship from the top and an undeniably strong business case, I blithely sailed into the project.

failcreativecommons You know what's coming, right? Things didn't go as I expected. Two things saved the project from being an unmitigated disaster: first, it was cancelled while still in the early planning phase, and second, I was able to learn some very important lessons about project management, and about life. In case they might be helpful to you too, here they are.

The first sign that things weren't going to go smoothly was when my key partner, who was in another organization, didn't engage. He didn't respond to emails, he didn't return phone calls, he cancelled meetings. Then, he told me point blank that "the project isn't a priority for my team". But, but but... I sputtered in my head. Your executive is a sponsor! Of course it's a priority, because your sponsor said so! Lesson number one: Do your own stakeholder analysis, even if you think the sponsor has already smoothed the way. Get to know your key players early in the project and learn what's important to them. I might have saved us all significant grief if I had done so.

Lesson number two came swiftly on the heels of lesson number one: It's never too early to do a risk assessment. Because my initial judgment was that the technical arena was going to be the biggest challenge, I planned risk assessment after the high-level technical plan was in place. And yet, if I had taken a look at the broader project landscape and noted that partner engagement was a critical success factor, I might have done that stakeholder analysis I missed, and therefore been alerted to escalate sooner and with more success.

And speaking of escalation, my third lesson was Escalate with facts. I held back from bringing executive leadership into the conflict because I feared making my partner look bad (he wasn't following his exec's lead, after all), and making myself look unskilled (how come I can't persuade effectively?). I got hung up in the emotion of it, rather than staying neutral and simply reporting on results: emails and phone calls not returned, meetings missed.

What I didn't know at the time, even though my partner's "it's not a priority" comment should have clued me in, was that his organization was working through the growing pains of being in high demand and under-staffed. His leadership hadn't yet put in place a functional prioritization mechanism, and my project happened to be something the execs wanted but the rank-and-file couldn't deliver. Hence the fourth lesson: Keep the big picture in mind. It's not always about your project; in this case, my project and its difficulty getting traction put a spotlight on a major business process gap. From a bigger picture perspective, my project's failure was an important step in the maturation of the company; a success!

And finally, when the project was cancelled and I felt responsible and upset, I had the opportunity to learn one last lesson: Don't take it personally. Sure, there were things I could have done to have failed faster, with less wasted time and political capital, but in the end, I did my best with what I knew at the time. The sad truth is that projects don't always succeed. My project's failure did not mean I was a failure. It meant I was in there trying and learning, and isn't that what life's really all about? jumpingcreativecommons

What lessons have you learned from project failures? I'd love to hear your stories in the comments below.

If you enjoyed these tips, sign up for CTWTC’s newsletter and don’t miss a future post or learning event announcement. CW Training and Consulting specializes in hands-on, interactive project management workshops - either off the shelf or customized to your needs.

Project Management / Team Leadership - 11/17/2016