Articles

Pit Happens: 7 Ways to Navigate Out of Project Despair

Is your project showing signs of trouble and slippage? As the project manager, ensure you are the one steady at the stick so you can help everyone navigate through the “pit.” 

Key Takeaways  

By Lonnie Pacelli/article originally appeared on ProjectManagement.com  

Note: Lonnie is an Accenture/Microsoft veteran with four decades of learnings under his belt. He frequently writes and speaks on leadership, project management, work/life balance, and disability inclusion. Reach him at [email protected]  

It was one of my earlier projects as a project manager.

I spent a lot of time planning the work out, calculating the critical path through the project, and getting everything ticked and tied prior to kickoff. The kickoff meeting went well with the exec sponsors. I set high expectations on my ability to deliver. The team was largely silent during the kickoff meeting, letting me do my thing.  

The first few weeks in, I reported that we were on schedule and budget, and within scope; we were on our way to a stellar delivery.  

At week four, a few of the tasks started slipping. “No problem, we can make it up,” I thought to myself. I reported that we were still on schedule.  

The next few weeks saw more slippage, and some team members began expressing concern about our ability to meet dates. I reported that things were still okay, and we were working through a couple of minor issues.  

After a couple more weeks, the concerns continued to crescendo, and one of the exec sponsors caught wind that there might be some problems on the project. He set up a meeting with me and some of my leads to deep-dive on what was going on. It was one of my most uncomfortable meetings at that point in my young career. I was the last one in the room to acknowledge there were problems.

The exec sponsor then talked with my manager and told him the project needed more seasoned leadership. A more senior project manager was assigned to the project, with my role being relegated to project administration under her leadership.

This experience burned an indelible mark in my psyche.

On my next project, my execution was very different. When I saw there were problems, I immediately pointed out that issues existed and the project was in trouble. My communication was frequent, voluminous, and broad. By golly, I wanted to make sure everyone knew we were in deep yogurt.

Again, an exec sponsor did a deep-dive with me and the team. I thought for sure I was going to be commended for raising the flag early.

I was replaced.

“What the &*%*#?” I thought after being benched.

I decided to seek out some advice from a more seasoned PM. This was a difficult thing for me to do because I was prideful and thought it was weak to seek out advice. Nonetheless, I swallowed my pride and had a talk with him.

It was a brutal and humbling discussion, but one that I needed to hear. I thought more about what happened on the two projects, the common threads, and what I could have done differently. It was then that I recognized that both projects hit a pit of despair, where things seemed to start off well—then started going south.

In the first project, I was in pit-of-despair denial, thinking the problems would somehow fix themselves. In the second, I was in pit-of-despair overreaction—that my job was to tell anyone who would listen that we were in trouble. Both were the wrong reactions.

I learned an important lesson: You can’t completely avoid pits of despair, but you can throttle how you manage through them. 

I’ve seen the pit-of-despair phenomenon repeat itself many times with other project managers in my career, where things start off (according to the PM) great, then trouble happens, then the drama comes when the PM can’t work his or her way out of the pit.

Even with the best planning and risk mitigation techniques, sometimes pit happens. It’s unavoidable. It’s how the PM responds to the pit that is of paramount importance.

The bottom line is that the team, execs and other stakeholders want to know that the PM is in control and acting unemotionally, based on facts and data.

It’s like one of my favorite analogies experiencing turbulence on a plane: The captain talks in calm, reassuring tones, but also doesn’t hide the fact that turbulence is on the way. The captain’s job is to be realistic, focused and calm. It’s that same demeanor that the team, execs and other stakeholders want (and need) to see in the PM.

When I have seen other PMs (or myself) managing a project heading toward the pit, here’s how I’ve seen the most success in navigating out it:

I’ve been through the pit of despair as a PM, consultant, team member, and exec stakeholder plenty of times. It’s uncomfortable, to say the least, for everyone involved. Ensure you are the one steady at the stick so you can help everyone navigate through the pit. Others depend on you.