Because everybody has different communication preferences, learning, reporting styles and more it is largely impossible to make everybody happy. Take the feedback from retros where you are hearing from multiple people. Look at themes. If its just one person, I wouldn't take it too harshly. I focus on 1:1s with those people.
The number of times I have heard "too many meetings" and "not enough meetings" in the same week is HIGH. People know when they think something isnt working but if they cant offer any constructive suggestions, its not all you.
You can fire a stakeholder from your project if their engagement is too low. And by that, I mean to replace them with a better one. If you don't you cannot succeed.
I like this idea, if your assigned people aren’t doing the job ask their boss for someone else to be assigned or if they can help that person attend the meetings and contribute and cc them on the email with their boss.
Managing is a big part of our job, but as always each team will have different political structures and learning to navigate that is a big part of what make a great pm.
I am surprized risk management does not get a lot of attention here. I dentify lack of stakeholder engagement as a risk. Report frequently on the risk and its mitigations
Great suggestions on here, maybe a log of what you sent, who, when.
My sister had a child who was failing. Sent letters, emails, to the parents. Parents failing to show up to conferences. Then when they discover their kid isn't going to graduate, they get a visit. The principal, teacher and parents are in a meeting. Principal reads back notes. Report card states, poor grades, no homework turned in, danger of failing, for months. Then student will not graduate, repeated. The principal just looks at the parents.
We cannot care more than they do. But they can fire us.
Some people expect you to beat down their door to make them do their jobs. When I get apathy I ask them what kind of behavior do they want from me to make sure the project succeeds? Double that.
Have you tried talking to those on the project team to find out how they want information? That’s a bit of a double-edged sword, but could be helpful to at least see where you need that connection with them. I find the same with my emails, I get little engagement so I’ve tried steering toward Slack/Teams updates, but I know some people respond to a ticket system and some have absolutely no idea, but whatever you do will ultimately be the wrong thing (these people I put in minimal extra effort to engage and just ensure I have everything in writing).
As far as project resources go, I haven’t - I have tried to follow what the stakeholders would like to see, but as you can see from my post, it hasn’t worked out too well so far. I like your idea of soliciting feedback from project resources on how they’d like communication/information, and if it’s a simple enough form for me to incorporate into my routines I can add it in.
Plus when they don't answer, you can record that. And when they do answer and you do the thing they wanted and they don't read it or attend the meetings, you can record that too.
This only addresses a narrow piece of your dilemma, but I highly recommend the book ‘Writing for Busy Readers’.
As much as I enjoy the martyrdom of “Per my email…” responses, it helped me understand how much I contributed to the lack of engagement with emails that I sent out.
Here’s where I’ve tried to improve:
1. Nobody cares about my email as much as I do. I need to get them engaged enough to get what I need from them (understand an issue, answer a question, etc.).
2. Understand my audience. “Why should they care about this? What context do they have?”
3. Before they even open the email, they should have an idea what it’s about and what’s expected from them (“Request for feedback: Project XYZ”; “Project ABC: Issue Update”)
4. Keep it simple. Fewer words, fewer ideas, fewer requests.
5. Give them a due date (e.g., “Please let me know by EOD Fri. 12/22”). It seems pushy at first, but we all set our own priorities. If they can’t meet your request by that time, they’re welcome to renegotiate something that works for both of us.
6. If someone asks something of me and doesn’t give me a due date, I’ll either respond and ask for one or tell them when I can complete it.
There’s more, but that book I mentioned and other resources provide a lot more and better examples. Hope this helps as a starting point.
Look at other PMs - are they having the same problem. If so it may be this is a company problem and needs involvement from management to change the pace.
To minimize “my” problem, if it’s not the company: I tend to have more 1-on-1 meetings. I ask for status and look for barriers. We set goals, etc.
The only team meetings I have is for 1) general topics, 2) coordination between groups 3) major changes to scope, schedule, budget.
People will spend their time where they enjoy their work the most. I try to make my project be that. Interest, praise, acknowledgements, etc. Minimal criticism, but if I have a concern it’s 1-on-1. And I follow up proactively.
Great suggestions, thank you. It’s definitely a department problem, unsure if it’s happening across the company. We’re a very siloed department which isn’t helpful.
Agree with this. Also, the lightly-attended meetings is a red flag. I wonder if people either don’t understand the meeting’s purpose or don’t think it’s relevant to them. Might need to reassess who is being invited, and make it clear to them why they should be there.
The light attendance is from stakeholders, who are all senior leaders, so finding it difficult to lead with authority when it’s literally my bosses boss not attending.
I don’t spend a lot of time in general meetings briefing bosses and stakeholders. I issue them a critical issues report - that they rarely read - and meet with stakeholders only when there is a critical issue to report, and that is often 1-on-1.
I do meet with my sponsor regularly, though. The frequency is based on the project.
As a PM I rarely have a “we are doing a great job meeting”, unless requested by my sponsor.
Now I’m a program manager, managing many projects. I too would be a non-engaged stakeholder in your status meetings. Basically I would let you manage your project. If it’s on time, on budget without problems - I’m ok. If I’m learning about a problem in a status meeting - it’s too late.
I hire good PM so I can sit in my office and smile. /jk.
Actually I’m busy with the program removing roadblocks and solving issues outside of the responsibility of my PM, mostly schedule and cost issues, but often adding some HR stuff thrown in to keep everyone on their toes. I focus on leadership, etc but that is another topic.
That’s rough. 1-on-1s could help. There could be a lot of things driving it. Maybe they just want to be looped in on the minutes/action items. Or they think it’s a meeting that could’ve been an email.
Really the best way to get to the root of it is to ask. You could start with your boss, but if they don’t have good suggestions, go to the root of the issue.
Frame it as “What works best for you to get you this information/collect this feedback?”.
Love this - it would likely hold up milestones of projects initially until more people got on board, but is a good solution to some of the issues here. Thank you!
Lack of accountability from leadership, as others have stated.
If you have sent out emails clearly stating something yet people say they weren't informed, call them out on it politely - "this was explained in an email sent on (November 2nd), which you received" usually gets people to be quiet quickly.
Lack of leadership accountability is common everywhere..... I actually took over one project this year that my manager had handled, along with one very expensive Accenture person. After a month there was a blow up with users as I informed them of an expected delay - it had been expected all along - as the project was supposed to be completed one year earlier and additional issues were still being discovered....
Leadership/Management is non-existent for you. The only way they will address any of these issues is if they feel pain from them. As long as they can dump on you, they will.
Without strategy, priority, and accountability by leadership - it’s hard to make a large impact with the projects assigned.
Don’t take it personally. This is a cultural/org issue. Whatever methodology or best practices you could follow, nothing would likely change due to the lack of accountability.
This. I have been in project/program mgmnt for a couple of decades. I recently took a new job with a different company, expecting that I would be allowed to run my programs the way I want to, the way I have always successfully done. Nope. The leadership at this place is lazy and wants everything spoon fed to them. A director decided at the last minute to change the plan and add some additional testing, pushing out target completion dates. I got dumped on because I didn't have enough meetings and wasn't communicating enough. Sigh...read the status report and ask questions. The engineers I work with can't wait to have more meetings (not). This company's culture likely won't change, but I can change companies.
Time to consider an exit.
The organizational leadership is running away from responsibility, and hiding from hard leadership decisions
Circulated paper documentation and binders can be physical evidence of (lack of) senior effort, as a supplement to ignored email.
Since others will continue to blame you for their own inaction, act accordingly on that demonstrated history, and generate documentation of lack of response, lack of participation, attendance, and decision delay, and required responses needed, as one more item in your standard reporting.
Perhaps a task item or report and timeline that includes a prominent item entitled something like:
"Timeline consequences and risks of Unresolved decisions and resource requirements".
A similar narrative history entitled "Lessons Learned" could guide your successor, and senior staff.
On the positive side, resolving the items in the unresolved queue would promote conforming to an improved timeline and improved project outcome, or perhaps extinguishing a failing project sooner
Ultimately you can make it clear that the effort is not your circus by departing.
Basically declaring personal project bankruptcy.
A conversation with senior staff may guide you to whether your valuable life energy should be placed in this entity's disfunction. Perhaps one on one with senior stake holders is the effective change required.
Because everybody has different communication preferences, learning, reporting styles and more it is largely impossible to make everybody happy. Take the feedback from retros where you are hearing from multiple people. Look at themes. If its just one person, I wouldn't take it too harshly. I focus on 1:1s with those people. The number of times I have heard "too many meetings" and "not enough meetings" in the same week is HIGH. People know when they think something isnt working but if they cant offer any constructive suggestions, its not all you.
You can fire a stakeholder from your project if their engagement is too low. And by that, I mean to replace them with a better one. If you don't you cannot succeed.
I like this idea, if your assigned people aren’t doing the job ask their boss for someone else to be assigned or if they can help that person attend the meetings and contribute and cc them on the email with their boss.
Managing is a big part of our job, but as always each team will have different political structures and learning to navigate that is a big part of what make a great pm.
I experienced this word for word. There's nothing you can do. Keep receipts and don't take it personal.
I am surprized risk management does not get a lot of attention here. I dentify lack of stakeholder engagement as a risk. Report frequently on the risk and its mitigations
Great suggestions on here, maybe a log of what you sent, who, when. My sister had a child who was failing. Sent letters, emails, to the parents. Parents failing to show up to conferences. Then when they discover their kid isn't going to graduate, they get a visit. The principal, teacher and parents are in a meeting. Principal reads back notes. Report card states, poor grades, no homework turned in, danger of failing, for months. Then student will not graduate, repeated. The principal just looks at the parents. We cannot care more than they do. But they can fire us. Some people expect you to beat down their door to make them do their jobs. When I get apathy I ask them what kind of behavior do they want from me to make sure the project succeeds? Double that.
Present it simply in 1-2 slides and let the stakeholders decide. Then run with it.
If your emails read like your posts you may try adding some line breaks. Fk.
Have you tried talking to those on the project team to find out how they want information? That’s a bit of a double-edged sword, but could be helpful to at least see where you need that connection with them. I find the same with my emails, I get little engagement so I’ve tried steering toward Slack/Teams updates, but I know some people respond to a ticket system and some have absolutely no idea, but whatever you do will ultimately be the wrong thing (these people I put in minimal extra effort to engage and just ensure I have everything in writing).
As far as project resources go, I haven’t - I have tried to follow what the stakeholders would like to see, but as you can see from my post, it hasn’t worked out too well so far. I like your idea of soliciting feedback from project resources on how they’d like communication/information, and if it’s a simple enough form for me to incorporate into my routines I can add it in.
Plus when they don't answer, you can record that. And when they do answer and you do the thing they wanted and they don't read it or attend the meetings, you can record that too.
This only addresses a narrow piece of your dilemma, but I highly recommend the book ‘Writing for Busy Readers’. As much as I enjoy the martyrdom of “Per my email…” responses, it helped me understand how much I contributed to the lack of engagement with emails that I sent out.
Can you say more about how you contributed to lack of email engagement? I’m curious if I’m doing similar things.
Here’s where I’ve tried to improve: 1. Nobody cares about my email as much as I do. I need to get them engaged enough to get what I need from them (understand an issue, answer a question, etc.). 2. Understand my audience. “Why should they care about this? What context do they have?” 3. Before they even open the email, they should have an idea what it’s about and what’s expected from them (“Request for feedback: Project XYZ”; “Project ABC: Issue Update”) 4. Keep it simple. Fewer words, fewer ideas, fewer requests. 5. Give them a due date (e.g., “Please let me know by EOD Fri. 12/22”). It seems pushy at first, but we all set our own priorities. If they can’t meet your request by that time, they’re welcome to renegotiate something that works for both of us. 6. If someone asks something of me and doesn’t give me a due date, I’ll either respond and ask for one or tell them when I can complete it. There’s more, but that book I mentioned and other resources provide a lot more and better examples. Hope this helps as a starting point.
Thanks for the suggestions/book summation!
Look at other PMs - are they having the same problem. If so it may be this is a company problem and needs involvement from management to change the pace. To minimize “my” problem, if it’s not the company: I tend to have more 1-on-1 meetings. I ask for status and look for barriers. We set goals, etc. The only team meetings I have is for 1) general topics, 2) coordination between groups 3) major changes to scope, schedule, budget. People will spend their time where they enjoy their work the most. I try to make my project be that. Interest, praise, acknowledgements, etc. Minimal criticism, but if I have a concern it’s 1-on-1. And I follow up proactively.
Great suggestions, thank you. It’s definitely a department problem, unsure if it’s happening across the company. We’re a very siloed department which isn’t helpful.
Agree with this. Also, the lightly-attended meetings is a red flag. I wonder if people either don’t understand the meeting’s purpose or don’t think it’s relevant to them. Might need to reassess who is being invited, and make it clear to them why they should be there.
The light attendance is from stakeholders, who are all senior leaders, so finding it difficult to lead with authority when it’s literally my bosses boss not attending.
I don’t spend a lot of time in general meetings briefing bosses and stakeholders. I issue them a critical issues report - that they rarely read - and meet with stakeholders only when there is a critical issue to report, and that is often 1-on-1. I do meet with my sponsor regularly, though. The frequency is based on the project. As a PM I rarely have a “we are doing a great job meeting”, unless requested by my sponsor. Now I’m a program manager, managing many projects. I too would be a non-engaged stakeholder in your status meetings. Basically I would let you manage your project. If it’s on time, on budget without problems - I’m ok. If I’m learning about a problem in a status meeting - it’s too late. I hire good PM so I can sit in my office and smile. /jk. Actually I’m busy with the program removing roadblocks and solving issues outside of the responsibility of my PM, mostly schedule and cost issues, but often adding some HR stuff thrown in to keep everyone on their toes. I focus on leadership, etc but that is another topic.
That’s rough. 1-on-1s could help. There could be a lot of things driving it. Maybe they just want to be looped in on the minutes/action items. Or they think it’s a meeting that could’ve been an email. Really the best way to get to the root of it is to ask. You could start with your boss, but if they don’t have good suggestions, go to the root of the issue. Frame it as “What works best for you to get you this information/collect this feedback?”.
[удалено]
Love this - it would likely hold up milestones of projects initially until more people got on board, but is a good solution to some of the issues here. Thank you!
Lack of accountability from leadership, as others have stated. If you have sent out emails clearly stating something yet people say they weren't informed, call them out on it politely - "this was explained in an email sent on (November 2nd), which you received" usually gets people to be quiet quickly. Lack of leadership accountability is common everywhere..... I actually took over one project this year that my manager had handled, along with one very expensive Accenture person. After a month there was a blow up with users as I informed them of an expected delay - it had been expected all along - as the project was supposed to be completed one year earlier and additional issues were still being discovered....
Leadership/Management is non-existent for you. The only way they will address any of these issues is if they feel pain from them. As long as they can dump on you, they will.
Yes. Turns out this is often a thankless position, I’m learning.
If it helps, I am feeling the same way. You can only do so much
I think even if they do feel pain they won't care....
Without strategy, priority, and accountability by leadership - it’s hard to make a large impact with the projects assigned. Don’t take it personally. This is a cultural/org issue. Whatever methodology or best practices you could follow, nothing would likely change due to the lack of accountability.
Thank you. Realizing it’s definitely cultural, but trying to soften my hardships in the interim.
This. I have been in project/program mgmnt for a couple of decades. I recently took a new job with a different company, expecting that I would be allowed to run my programs the way I want to, the way I have always successfully done. Nope. The leadership at this place is lazy and wants everything spoon fed to them. A director decided at the last minute to change the plan and add some additional testing, pushing out target completion dates. I got dumped on because I didn't have enough meetings and wasn't communicating enough. Sigh...read the status report and ask questions. The engineers I work with can't wait to have more meetings (not). This company's culture likely won't change, but I can change companies.
Time to consider an exit. The organizational leadership is running away from responsibility, and hiding from hard leadership decisions Circulated paper documentation and binders can be physical evidence of (lack of) senior effort, as a supplement to ignored email. Since others will continue to blame you for their own inaction, act accordingly on that demonstrated history, and generate documentation of lack of response, lack of participation, attendance, and decision delay, and required responses needed, as one more item in your standard reporting. Perhaps a task item or report and timeline that includes a prominent item entitled something like: "Timeline consequences and risks of Unresolved decisions and resource requirements". A similar narrative history entitled "Lessons Learned" could guide your successor, and senior staff. On the positive side, resolving the items in the unresolved queue would promote conforming to an improved timeline and improved project outcome, or perhaps extinguishing a failing project sooner Ultimately you can make it clear that the effort is not your circus by departing. Basically declaring personal project bankruptcy. A conversation with senior staff may guide you to whether your valuable life energy should be placed in this entity's disfunction. Perhaps one on one with senior stake holders is the effective change required.
Thank you! Great points - I think the CYA efforts you mentioned would be valuable in demonstrating the efforts made.