Page 27 - Straight Talk On Project Management IV

or to get groceries if they return a call within an hour or so? If the answer is yes, then please tell
them, it will be appreciated.

4. Be sympathetic to the odd mishap on conference calls. You probably remember the BBC
interview where a child marched into the carefully laid out office space of the interviewee with what
seemed like the entire household scrambling in the background to retrieve said child from view. That
is going to happen, as are dogs barking and doorbells ringing. It is important to try to limit these
interruptions during calls but impossible to stop them entirely. Postmen are going to be delighted
that someone is home to take a delivery, I for one have a nurse and shop assistant as neighbours and
am currently taking various deliveries for them too.

Assigning meaningful tasks

Business may be slowing down but seizing the opportunity to get your teams involved in generating
new business is important and critically provides them with meaningful tasks to divert attention
from the news pages right now. Consider if you could implement the following:

1. Reviewing internal processes. We all know this too well: we have lessons learnt logs stacking up
but never enough time to implement the recommendations. Now is the time. Tackle the process
inefficiencies by setting teams a weekly challenge to come up with creative ideas on how to
improve processes and internal systems. Critically, get them working together not in isolation, so
there is a need to reach consensus. Once your projects begin to kick back into action, ask them
to measure the level of improvement so they are invested in making the improvements work.

2. Get employees involved in marketing. Now, you cannot commandeer their LinkedIn profiles to
promote your company however you can ask them to contribute into bids, write blogs for your
website or provide case studies of their recent projects. The research they do will inject new
ideas and energy into your company. If you publish it on your website, you won’t have to ask
them to share it on their profiles, they will do it with pride.

3. Internal (cross-)training. When things are quiet it is also the perfect moment to foster
interdisciplinary learning. That bright new starter might benefit from spending time with a senior
DevOp, whilst your project managers might want to work with your business analysts.

There are so many more things to add to this list. Your teams will have ideas about what they can do
to support the business, ask them for suggestions too.

Keeping in touch
“Keeping in touch”, a “catch up” – words that fill every one of your employees with dread. You know
why? Because they usually don’t know what’s coming. The meeting invite is blank and only the
person setting up the meeting knows its often genuinely harmless purpose. This is where most
creativity will be needed if you have a workforce distributed over spare rooms and kitchen tables.
1. Use meetings wisely and ALWAYS add in an agenda or talking point. In these troubled times,
you do not want to add undue stress to your employees.