How Do You Deliver Bad News About Your Project?

We know the expression "Do not kill the messenger" means that the person who delivers bad news is that it is not the same person responsible for causing the bad news. In our day to day activities such as project managers find that the recipient of bad news (managers, project stakeholders, and customers) somewhere and forget to respond inappropriately.

This is due to the project manager is responsible for the success of their projects. However, there are events that occur that can be completely beyond the control of anyone. For example,. Improvements in the management of the client can introduce delays, or new technology takes longer than anticipated to implement

Add to this the role played by the Prime Minister as Risk Manager for the reporting of issues that have the potential to turn into bad news, a messenger can be turned into someone that nobody likes to see. This is not a good position for the book

Over the years, I watched three different approaches to the Prime Ministers used to provide the bad news:

Grenada - This is where a messenger walks in a crowded room (usually filled with executives), delivers the bad news with all its terrible consequences, without any warning, and then goes . This is completely unacceptable, inefficient and unsustainable ... primarily for the PM career. silence - This is the place where the messenger does not decide to give poruku.Zaključivanje may be that they feel the problem will be solved, or they do not want to deal with the subsequent actions required for resolve the situation. This approach is not recommended. Trial Balloon - This is the most effective method I have seen koristi.Glasnik meet with several interested parties at the time of laying out the facts situation with "Let me pass something from you" approach. This allows for more options to be considered, more information will be introduced (for example, more resources may be available to the Prime Minister did not know were available) and the crafting of the final message that will reach before it is introduced in all of this is skupinu.Rezultat the messenger does not stand alone, more features are taken into account, but the bad news is not sensationalized.

Delivering bad news about the project was an inevitable part of our jobs as project managers. It is necessary to exercise discretion, skill and good judgments about how to effectively deliver bad news without leaving a path of destruction behind.