So, how can you give your daunting, unwieldy project a fighting chance at success? I’ll give you one of the top secrets to make it happen: “Just get started”.

That’s it. That’s the secret. Okay, I know it doesn’t sound that profound but in my coaching and in the project management and business development work I do, you’d be surprised how little that secret is employed. Most people spend more time thinking about the work than doing it. It’s action and not cerebral activity that gets projects moving.

To borrow some principles from physics, it takes more energy to start moving an object than it does to keep it going. Or, as my science teacher, Dr. Harris, said, “Objects in motion tend to stay in motion”. The idea here is to just create critical mass. It doesn’t have to be perfect, and it doesn’t have to be the most obvious place to start, but you need to create something. You need to do something to get it going.

Projects are often delayed or stall early in the process because there wasn’t enough critical mass built up. Project members end up dwelling on the details or acquiring “analysis paralysis” because those things seem important they are often easier than rolling up the sleeves and getting to work.

Want to write a book? Just start writing. You might not start at the front and, the truth is, you might end up scrapping most of what you write by the time you’re three-quarters of the way through, but you’re more likely to get to that three-quarter mark sooner by just starting somewhere.

Want to create a new marketing effort for your business? Just dive in. You may not have all the details finished and you might not have all the I’s dotted and T’s crossed in your plan, but having something started will make a difference to getting it done. Otherwise it will sit on the backburner for months or years.

Want to start a business? It can be tempting to spend time doing the research and reading up about the marketplace and visiting the competitors, but you’ll be closer to success by minimizing those things and instead creating a website and marketing your product or service.

Want to get started on Twitter? Forget thinking about the best way to do it or how it might impact your business. Sign up. Start Twittering. Figure it out later.

I’m not saying that you should blindly rush into these things or that there is no place for preliminary thought. But I am saying that there comes a point when your thinking becomes less advantageous than any action you take.

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In order to be able to have this period, we need a steady flow of project related work, so when the volume is low or when we have an exceptionally large amount of candidates in the training period, we hop on over to Elance and see if there are any projects that would be ideal for us.

A few weeks ago we bid on one, and the person posting the project (let’s call him John) came back and said he wanted to set up a time to talk to us. John and one of my staff scheduled an appointment and when we called John he did not answer, so we left him a message. Then we went back and forth on the project message board scheduling another time, and again John did not show up. We let him know that when he was ready to proceed he could reach us anytime at our phone number/ email address.

We did not hear from John until 3 days ago, when he posted a message that said something similar to this (some data changed to not leave any identifying material):

I need X. All Content and Design will be provided.

I also need A, B, C and D. All Content and Design will be provided.

I need this project completed quickly…and WILL NOT tolerate bait an switch tactics…low ball bid then run the project up later.

So, here is the problem… the original project was for X. Our bid outlined X. So, now he is asking for A, B, C and D, which is fine – but it is obviously going to be a different price from X. However, what bothered us was the:

I need this project completed quickly…and WILL NOT tolerate bait an switch tactics…low ball bid then run the project up later.

I don’t care how many bad experiences you have had, you never go into a relationship accusing or assuming that a new provider is going to do something unethical or wrong. We specifically outlined that we would give X, we specifically said that it would take 3 days from receiving full content, design and server information. We attempted to meet with him twice. So, why he would write on the message board asking for X (with A, B, C and D) ‘quickly’ and then tell us not to do any bait and switch tactics… who did the bait and switch? Our bid was for X, he took our bid and threw A, B, C and D in there as well.

In the end, we denied the job offer and we politely told him that we were unable to help him at this time, with the change of scope his project contained.

The point of this blog post is to show that being rude does not get you anywhere. It is unacceptable in the business place. I prefer not to do business with individuals or organizations that are rude, and if I am rude to someone (and I am not innocent, I have been!) then I would expect them to not want to do business with me. Everyone makes mistakes and some people just have a bad day. Maybe John was having a bad day, maybe I should have given him another chance, but my guard would have already been up and we would have already been on the defensive side of the wall, which would not have helped cultivate the client – provider relationship.

What ever happened to the ‘Treat others the way you want to be treated’ concept? Is it old fashion? Has it gone out the window? I ask because this is just one example of the rudeness I am seeing in client/provider relationships as of lately. A colleague of mine, a pretty successful business coach (she gave me permission to do this blog as long as I did not mention any names) had another instance of rudeness ruining a possible relationship, here is her story:

A prospective client contacted me about retaining my coaching services, and everything was going great, the initial consultation went wonderful… I was really looking forward to helping him. He decided to retain me for two sessions a month, so I sent over my agreement to him. My agreement is a simple one page thing, it is not like many complicated contracts out there. It outlines what I give, what the client will give and where the limitations are. There is a section in my agreement that states my business hours and that any appointments must be made inside of these hours, otherwise there is an additional fee. The client, when he returned the agreement made a note on it that simply said ‘Provider will not provide sessions or work outside of business hours without prior approval from client’ and he initialed it. I thought to myself, how strange! Obviously if we pre-schedule our appointments, he would be well aware if any sessions are outside of my normal business hours. However, I too initialed that handwritten line and we began with our coaching relationship. About three weeks into the relationship, the client had an emergency, and called my office line at 9pm in the evening to speak about it (outside of my business hours). I normally would not have gotten the call, because it is outside of business hours, however my husband and I happened to be in the office fixing a leak in the window, so I took the call. When my invoice was issued at the end of the month, there was an issue. My client was irate that I charged him the additional fee for the late night call. I was kind of dumbfounded, because he called me at 9pm, he obviously knew that I was providing a session outside of my normal business hours. I was in quite a predicament, because I really wanted to help the client, but he obviously did not value my time. I ended up not charging him for that session at all and cancelling our agreement, as I need to work with people who value me as an individual.

Unbelievable! Everyone is human, everyone has the right to have a personal life outside of work and the right to provide the services they provide in a manner that is comfortable to them. I don’t understand why this gentleman above, would think, that he could contact his coach at 9pm in the evening and the agreement would not be adhered to? I bet you money, that his clients don’t contact him at 9pm at night without him billing them (if he even takes the call!).

I say agreements or no agreements, if everyone treated others the way they wanted to be treated that client/service provider relationships would be more productive and fruitful to both parties! What do you think?

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Project managers need to be optimists in order to plan a lofty goal and keep everyone working towards it. But they also need to be pessimists to try and come up with the top reasons why a project might be derailed, and part of their planning needs to consider how to minimize or eliminate those derailing elements.

If the derailing element could be a person, the challenge can be political. How do you effectively keep the person from negatively influencing the project? There are so many ways that a person could potentially harm a project – even without them realizing they are doing it! One classic example is the high-level executive who swoops in at the three quarters mark on the project only to give a long, scope-changing list of things they don’t like about the project. Of course, you can’t keep them from doing this, but you can try to get their buy-in and approval and feedback earlier, or try to get even higher level feedback earlier (which tends to reduce the amount of feedback they want to give).

If the derailing element could be an economic or industry evolution factor, the challenge is ultimately a best-for-the-business decision. If you anticipate a rough economic ride throughout your project, you need to continually sell the decision-makers on why the project is good for their business. This takes sales presentation skills and expert objection handling.

If the derailing element could be a regulatory issue, the challenge is legal. Get the legal department involved early and often to revisit the changing landscape of the project in order to stay on top of any problems you think you might face.

There are many reasons that a project could become derailed, and I’ve only listed 3 common reasons here. The best thing any project manager can do is sit down before the project and ask themselves:
1. What could possibly go wrong?
2. What can I do to avoid that now?
… and then they need to revisit this periodically through the project.

You won’t eliminate every risk, and you won’t even foresee every risk, but your projects will run more smoothly because you put in the effort at the beginning to mitigate risks.

Related posts:

1. The Risks of Unbundled Pricing
2. An all-too-common project horror story
3. Horror story from the front lines of project management