No one wants to work on a failing project. Projects stop for lots of reasons but there are two things that will kill your project completely: complacency and competition. Let’s take a look at those in this article and also some ways to address the problems.

Complacency

Complacency is the self-satisfaction that leads people to stop paying attention. People are unaware of the problems around them, or if they are, they’ve stopped noticing to the point where the risks and dangers don’t mean anything to them anymore. They are coasting.

 

 

The signs of complacency are:

·         The team stop asking questions.

·         They appear bored; it’s clear that they aren’t engaged in their work.

·         They are satisfied with the performance levels they are seeing. There is no drive for continuous process improvement or desire to carry out lessons learned sessions, let alone implement the output of them.

Your project may slow down, or it might maintain the same pace with a drop in quality. It won’t be overnight, you are much more likely to see a gradual decline in commitment or interest. Complacency manifests itself more in attitudes, especially around handling risk and communication. You may hear things like, “That risk will never happen to us,” or “They don’t need to know that.” If you see any smugness on the project then that’s also likely to be a symptom of complacency that should be tackled.

Causes of complacency

Here are some of the causes of complacency:

·         They’ve got away with doing something the ‘wrong’ way for so long that there is no incentive to return to the right way. And equally, there is no reason to do it the right way as the wrong way is not sanctioned.

·         Optimism bias. In other words, we look for the positive messages and ignore the warning signs because it’s (in some people’s) human nature to be overly optimistic.

·         Fatigue caused by working long hours or life outside of work, such as a newborn joining the family.

·         Stress.

How to deal with complacency

Dealing with complacency isn’t easy because you’ve got to get that sense of urgency and engagement back into the team. Here are some tips for handling it once you’ve realised you have a problem.

Share the big picture. Many complacent team members act that way because they genuinely don’t know any different. They don’t understand the bigger picture. A project that has a small part to play in safeguarding the company’s future might appear to them as just another admin deliverable to churn out. Share the vision and also the context that helps site the project amongst other organisational initiatives.

Keep it fresh. Change it up a bit. Check your own style to assure yourself that you haven’t been sucked into this downward spiral yourself. Your attitude and style rubs off on the others, so be upbeat and positive.

Make it important. Introduce sanctions for not doing things the right way and incentives for changing behaviour. Set new standards for the project and hold people accountable.

Competition

Competition can come from other teams internally or from your external competitors.

Internally, the signs of competition may be that your colleagues start asking for project managers from another division instead of your own. They may start using standard documentation from other teams instead of your own. If you have fully standardised project management practices, then they may shift away from these to using their own resources or contractors.

Externally there may not be any signs that there is competition, but it is out there. Your competitors are just as good as you at keeping their corporate initiatives a secret until they are ready to reveal them.

Causes of competition

Competition internally is likely to be because you and your team aren’t meeting their needs. If your project sponsor tells you she is bringing in a contract PM to run the project, then you know that you aren’t managing their expectations or delivering as they would expect. Ideally you’d want to head this off before it happens.

External competition is completely natural and to be expected. As you can’t copyright ideas, it is likely that other businesses have similar ideas to you at the same time, sparked by similar events and will be working on initiatives similar to yours.

How to deal with competition

It’s hard to deal with external competition especially as you might not know it is there until the competitor launches their product and yours is suddenly defunct.

Try to keep up with the industry press and stay alert to changes in the marketplace. Others in your company may be better placed to do this such as analysts or supplier management teams, as well as your own strategic management functions and portfolio office.

The best way to deal with competition is to assume it is out there. Deliver your projects with the competitive edge in mind, with a desire to bring the deliverables speedily to market (or to your internal market or customer).

Watch out for both competition and complacency on your projects. They can derail and ultimately kill off the project you have been working on so hard, so try to spot the signs and deal with them before the issue becomes terminal.