Curtis, author of Vision to Reality, has helped dozens of small businesses accomplish their vision. | cljassoc.com | Jenkins & Associates.
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During the pandemic, there was a great deal of stress and fear. It was necessary to work through this to keep ourselves, our families, and our jobs safe. Until now, the worst events I experienced were the Sept. 11 attacks and the 2008 financial crisis. However, there was nothing like the Covid-19 pandemic for me. I witnessed how people reacted to work after the pandemic in two major ways: increased burnout and the demand to keep working from home. As a leader, I changed as I became more mindful of how I must operate in response to accommodate these changes.
Here are three laws that I believe will continue to be critical to managing projects no matter what the future holds:
1. Murphy’s Law: Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. This is why you should plan, perform risk analysis and adjust so you can stay on time and on budget. It always shows up no matter what the project or circumstance. Life happens and you must prepare for it.
2. Parkinson’s Law: I define this as humans taking as much time as you give them. Give them a week, they will take a week. Give them a month, they will take a month. Therefore, try to understand the work and the people who are doing the work. Apply a little bit of pressure to ensure things are on time.
3. Curtis’ Law: Cut every estimate given by a human by 50% to stay on time. Why? Because the human counted on Parkinson’s law, and they attempted to make a concession for Murphy’s law. I find we always encounter something new in Murphy’s law. Taking away the time is only to make the team and project manager act with a sense of urgency to reveal the issues sooner rather than later to remain on time. This has helped me throughout my 20-year career in project management.
Now, let’s talk about what has changed.
Increased Burnout
During the pandemic, I watched my company’s project portfolio rise from 60 concurrent projects to over 100 concurrent projects. Never before have I had this many projects at this company with the same resource capacity. This was advantageous to the company as we were completing projects at a pace beyond what we planned for. However, it came at a cost.
I noticed I was spending less time dealing with issues and risks to projects and more as a therapist due to the teams crumbling under the self-imposed workload that almost became a new normal for the organization until I stepped in. I analyzed our sweet spot for the total number of concurrent projects with the resources we had. Over a short time, after my analysis and subsequent review, we only selected the most crucial projects in order to maintain that “sweet spot” of concurrent projects. We finally stabilized and the company as a whole spent a lot of time dealing with employee self-care. People became more aware that they needed to take care of themselves first. From the burnout came retaliation, which leads me to my next example of change.
Increased Desire For Remote Work
People don’t want to work in the office anymore after spending two years or more working remotely. With this new working trend, and with workers demanding this as a perk, it is becoming increasingly more difficult to establish the necessary relationships with stakeholders to get things done.
Another phenomenon I've noticed with the work-at-home culture is that there is an increased amount of moonlighting. People are working for more than one company—which in most cases is not illegal—and maximizing their revenue but simultaneously minimizing their effort to support your company. The additional side effect is the vast amounts of unused workspace real estate which have other far-reaching economic disadvantages that companies will have to contend with. I suspect that this will either change back to mandatory work in the office or that technological advances will keep this as a permanent fixture in work culture.
Leadership Tactics To Manage Through Change
Being an inspirational leader is paramount in these times of change. From the perspective of employees or project teams, I always make sure I establish a solid relationship with my key stakeholders. I have a firm belief that a personal touch matters. Here are six things that highlight how you should behave as a leader given these post-pandemic realities:
1. Be a good communicator. Be very clear on what you want and need to achieve.
2. Have empathy. You have to understand your team members and whatever challenges they are facing personally.
3. Be flexible. Whether working from home, allowing for time with family or allowing for errands to be run without pressure, ensure there is an agreement on meeting expectations.
4. Clarify your expectations when you allow for such flexibility. One way to keep up with what is happening is by using tools that track work.
5. Engagement requires more finesse. We can do this through already existing tools, but they matter more now than ever.
6. Increase usage of productivity tools. These tools were already in place such as Monday.com, Jira, Trello, etc. Now that we aren’t seeing each other, we must use these tools as a form of communication. However, as I mentioned previously, these tools alone will not do the trick and the tools of the future will help with measuring effectiveness as advances in project management and the use of artificial intelligence capabilities.
In conclusion, we can address the human element of dealing with burnout and stress with how we manage our teams and tools to help keep us productive. As these tools advance, so will changes in people's work patterns. The idea is to remain flexible and adjust accordingly with the overarching theme of taking care of your employees first.
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