Project Server Blogs

If your organization is like most, management is running cautious right now, if not completely driven by economic fear. The market abhors uncertainty and the typical automatic management reaction to uncertain times often results in new project paralysis, including the fear of launching projects that could dramatically improve performance and productivity. Organizations that react this way are missing an excellent opportunity to make some of the changes that they may even have lamented not having done prior to the last stretch of prosperous business activity. This is shortsighted because an economic downturn is the best possible time to orchestrate business improvement efforts like Enterprise Project Management as well as other process improvement initiatives.

When an organization makes a serious commitment to implement new management practices, it often requires the addition of new talent. There is no better time to shop for new talent than a time when companies are indiscriminately cutting their workforces. In this case indiscriminate refers to the practice of slashing by the numbers rather than by carefully sifting through the talent pool and choosing to cut based on measures of worth. Organizations that cut jobs by the thousands cannot possibly take the time to be discriminate responding to pure economics rather than other business drivers. The result is that many companies release very talented people into the market where companies wise enough to seize the opportunity to grab them, can significantly improve the talent and experience profile of their staff. The end of the dot-com boom saw a similar widespread release of IT talent providing an opportunity for companies who had previously hired marginal talent, to reconstitute their technology staff with a better grade of employee. That same opportunity exists today, but on a much wider scale.

One of the most common excuses for not implementing EPM or other process improvement initiatives is lack of time. "We’re just too busy right now to take this on," is a common lament. If there is any one thing that a business slowdown brings, it is time. Of course, an organization faced with a business slowdown must invest some of this time into building strategies and tactics to survive the economic realities it is facing, but a wise organization spends some of this newly available energy and time on making the existing business approach better and more profitable. Now that the time is available, it makes sense to undertake process improvements that can yield cycle time reductions and improve performance. The best time to implement EPM is when you have the time to do it well.

Perhaps the greatest challenge to implementing management style changes is the organizational resistance that they invoke. Changing the way people work is never a popular sport, but people are much more likely to get the reasons for doing so during economic hard times than in times of prosperity. With the stock market losing almost half of its value and with daily job loss announcements and soaring unemployment numbers, even people who are not so worried about our jobs, are a little bit worried at this point. An economic downturn is the perfect stage set for introducing management changes that an organization would normally push back on. Selling a new management approach is not nearly as difficult when the government and media are constantly talking down the economic outlook. People instinctively get that process improvement is good when times are bad.

While we all must work through this time of economic uncertainty, some of us will emerge stronger and healthier through the experience. Those organizations that recognize the opportunities of time, talent and attitude that a recession brings can seize the moment and implement process improvements that will yield a significant ROI for many years and economic conditions to come.