Five Ways to Improve Your Business’ Operations

 

Does your business have what it takes to maintain a spotless record for top-notch results?

If you answered, “yes” under the assumption that your business uses the technologies and the finest materials, you may have forgotten one important component—project management. Without the proper project management, your operation’s name could be “mud.”

Here are five ways to keep your business’ operations free and clear of mishaps and messes.

Create “Living” Project Agreements

Let’s face it, things happen. Customers change their minds about what they thought they wanted, markets force change, new threats and opportunities arise, and new priorities surface. All of these changes can make the original goal of your project obsolete. When you create a project agreement, make it vibrant and living so changes can be made and accepted by those using the document. Give everyone the understanding that its initial version will most likely be changed and tweaked to keep up with unforeseen challenges or opportunities. Most importantly, don’t file it away; instead, make sure it’s readily available throughout the project and that the team feels involved in its evolution.

When a project is directed by the project agreement, changes often mean a re-launch of the project. In my experience, it’s better to spend half a day re-launching the project based on the new agreement than to create a final deliverable that no one wants, or to attempt to complete a project with inadequate resources and lack of support from the project sponsor.

When you’re developing a new plan from the new agreement, you may also be able to use the interim deliverables you’ve already created for the new project, ultimately shortening the project cycle time for the new project.

Improve Team Dynamics

We’re humans. It’s true that we don’t always get along. The bad news is that an inability to work together towards a common goal can mean failure. Clashing personalities and work-styles can lead to: lack of commitment, lack of interaction and lack of interest in constructively resolving conflict.

Many projects also lose and gain people during the execution of the project. When this happens, it is important that the team spend a half hour together developing their new team guidelines and meeting protocols. With any new people joining the team, it becomes a new team. Re-developing your guidelines and protocols is done for the same reason it is done initially—to facilitate working relationships, to create a way to positively interact and to prevent destructive conflict. Don’t let “new” deter you; instead, let new people bring new ideas and energy to the project.

Create Institutional Memory

How smart is your company? It is only as smart as its lessons learned and without a project closeout phase, there isn’t a place to collect that data. Industry standard project management practices require a project closeout phase to provide your organization with powerful historical knowledge from across the enterprise.

Recreating the wheel is a complete time waster and discourages employees. With a project closeout phase, people feel empowered as their work builds upon others and visa versa. It also enables a company to learn and grow rather than continually repeat history.

Create Contagious Commitment

People need to see, hear, smell and taste success; even small victories have a big impact. It’s important to communicate and show success with early adopters, so people will understand what you’re doing and how they can contribute to the ongoing success.

Create a Safe Environment for Sharing Ideas and Issues

For people to communicate, they have to be in an environment that is safe and that allows for off beat thinking and open, honest feedback. If you foster an environment that shoots down ideas and honesty, then the staff will take the path most traveled and eventually the people and ideas become stale.

As you approach the last half of the year, think about which of these project management tips could help your organization. Make project management best practices a part of your organization. Add some checks and balances to your process so when 2009 begins, you’ve got a foundation for improving communication and process for years to come.

Michelle LaBrosse, PMP, is the founder of Cheetah Learning, and author of Cheetah Negotiations and Cheetah Project Management._The Project Management Institute, www.pmi.org, recently selected Michelle as one of the 25 Most Influential Women in Project Management in the World, and only one of two women selected from the training and education industry. She is a graduate of the Harvard Business School’s Owner President Managers (OPM) program and also holds engineering degrees from Syracuse University and the University of Dayton.