Have you ever watched a project that seemed to be progressing well suddenly become the subject of endless discussion? Conversations start to stretch well beyond the time they should take, more people are invited into meetings, estimates that were accepted months ago are questioned again, and decisions everyone thought had already been made somehow find their way back onto the agenda. Before long, leadership is asking for new reports, the team is spending more time explaining its work than doing it, and the project that once appeared to be moving steadily now feels as though it’s fighting for permission to continue.
It’s a frustrating place to be, particularly for the people doing the work. While leadership searches for confidence, the project team often finds itself rebuilding business cases, revisiting assumptions, and answering the same questions over and over again. None of those activities move the project forward. They simply consume the time that would otherwise have been spent delivering it.
The temptation at this point is to recover the schedule. People start updating the plans, refining original estimates (sidebar, that’s actually one of the worst times to start refining estimates; maybe a future topic), adding more milestones, and producing increasingly detailed reports. Those activities may improve visibility, but they rarely address the reason the project lost momentum in the first place.
Most troubled projects share a handful of common characteristics. Somewhere along the way, the business purpose became less clear, priorities shifted without everyone recognizing the shift, new stakeholders entered the conversation without the original context, or resources slowly drifted toward other work that also appeared important. A common one I’ve encountered: the existing project lost buy-in because it feels like it’s taking too long, and another new shiny objective has appeared that everyone wants to pursue. Usually, this is also a project with some glorified potential outcome that will make a specific leader look good if it succeeds. Whatever the cause, eventually the project reaches a point where every discussion is about the project itself rather than the outcome it was created to achieve.
Whenever I encounter a project in that situation, I return to the same three questions that helps to put leaders back in a place of validating their claims:
- Where are we trying to go?
- What’s stopping us from getting there?
- What do we need to overcome that?
The first question reconnects everyone with the destination. Sometimes this reminder helps to ground other requests and slow down the enthusiasm about alternative shiny things. Every successful project should have a clearly understood purpose that can be explained in a few sentences. If different leaders describe different outcomes, the project is almost guaranteed to lose focus because every decision will be measured against a different definition of success.
The second question usually produces a surprisingly short list. At first, people often identify half a dozen issues, but after discussing them for a few minutes they begin recognizing that many of those problems are simply consequences of one larger barrier. Once the real obstacle becomes visible, the discussion becomes much more productive because everyone is now trying to solve the same problem. One of the best answers to the question is that there’s nothing stopping us from getting there. This is an amazing answer, because it’s often an epiphany that there really are no barriers to continued success, and derailing a project unnecessarily has just been wasted effort. This can sometimes get leaders to realize that they just need to be a little more patient, and wait out the completion.
The third question shifts attention toward action. Rather than spending another meeting defending the past, the team begins identifying what needs to happen next. Sometimes that means making a difficult decision. Sometimes it means restoring resources, confirming priorities, or clarifying expectations. Sometimes it means acknowledging that the barrage of inquisitions and challenges have just been a waste of time, and they need to move ahead with what already had momentum. Whatever the answer, the conversation moves from explanation to progress.
Before investing significant effort into recovery, however, leadership should answer one additional question.
- Does this project still deserve to exist?
A project that represented an excellent investment six months ago may no longer be the right investment today. Asking that question isn’t an admission that the project has failed. It’s an opportunity to confirm that the project still supports the direction of the organization before asking the team to continue investing time and energy into it. This is also an affirmation that having a solid strategy with specific goals to align projects against is one of the best ways to prevent a company from getting to this kind of issue in the first place.
If the answer is that yes, the project still deserves to exist, the recovery effort should begin by restoring confidence rather than trying to rebuild schedules. Reconnect the project to its business purpose, and confirm that leadership still agrees on the intended outcome. Re-establish priorities if competing work has diluted focus. Then communicate the plan clearly enough that every member of the team understands both the destination and the next step toward reaching it. You would be surprised how often a leadership team can come to an agreement when a confident person at the table has the courage to say, “We all agreed this had value. We all see that it still has value. We’re already 75% done. We’ll be done by June. We just need everyone to stay focused while we get this finished, otherwise we’ll be revisiting this circular decision process every week. What are we all prepared to do to help make it happen?” And even more courageous, “What is the justification for actively interfering with the project’s success, when we’re already so close?”
One lesson has stayed with me throughout my career: Projects don’t succeed because they had a great schedule, a beautiful Gantt chart, and excellent PowerPoint follow-ups. They become successful because the people responsible for delivering them share the same understanding of why the work matters and what success actually looks like, and everyone agrees to support its trajectory either by directly working on the project, or by directly staying out of its way. Either you’re helping it succeed, or you’re getting in its way.
Once that clarity returns, the decisions become easier and happen faster. Pointless discussions and debates get shorter, and meaningful discussions about how to proceed increase. Progress gets its rhythm again.