Now here’s the thing about fighting fires, often pouring water over it just won’t suffice. Especially, if to fight this almighty fire, you are brandishing a mere watering can.
Faced with the reality that your project is starting to go up in flames, the last thing you might want to do is take a step back. However, that might be exactly the right move for your project.
Emotions can run high in projects. If nobody can pinpoint where the project has gone wrong, and nobody can come up with a way of fixing it, then it can all become a bit chaotic. From budget blowouts, to loss of confidence in your team, and in yourself, a project can quickly lose its original shine.
And we hear you, you may well be shaking your head wondering how someone who hasn’t been there from the start, can understand your project’s needs and objectives. So, we have compiled a list highlighting five advantages to appointing an independent project recovery manager, to reshine the polish on your project, and morph that simple watering can into a gushing fire hose.
Five Advantages to Engaging an Independent Project Recovery Manager
1. Experience
A seasoned project recovery manager has seen it all before and knows what works. Our experts have honed project recovery skills and can offer solutions that you may otherwise have overlooked. Project recovery managers often have a deeper understanding of certain project types and can offer guidance from their years of experience in their particular field.
2. Objective Insights
Cutting through the noise and unveiling the true state of affairs is one of the first visible benefits of engaging an independent recovery manager. A team working together over a long period of time can fall into habits of not hearing every suggestion, or many ideas can be discarded, depending on whose lips it came from. Conversely, people tend to trust experts that have been hired to save the day. They expect a solution to come from them. That means suggestions can be better heard coming from an independent party as opposed to one of the team.
3. Difficult Decision-making
They are the bearer of bad news. When reviewing a failing project, hidden issues are uncovered and reviewed, presenting some difficult decisions that need to be made. Recommendations might include reviewing contracts, reducing scope, or reassigning team members. Animosity can result when difficult decisions are executed as these actions might be unpopular, emotionally difficult or lead to a tarnished reputation. Leaving the delivery of bad news to an independent party means when they leave, so too do any bad feelings.
4. Fresh Eyes
No matter how many times you and your team have gone over it, you can’t make heads or tails of what needs to be done to move forward. Sometimes, all a project needs is a fresh set of eyes – and not only a fresh set of eyes, but a fresh set of expert eyes at that.
5. Management Style
Often what’s needed is a shake-up of the way things are being run. With new management of the project, new ideas, new voices may come out to play. New management can reignite the confidence of the team, it can solely be down to the honeymoon period of having someone else in charge, someone new to impress, or it may well be that an independent person with no history of the team, might provide a softer approach to allow new ideas to be voiced.
Before your project turns to ashes perhaps it’s time to let one of our trusted experts take over. This sends a clear message to the project team and the wider business that correction of the problem is being owned and taken seriously.
An independent project recovery manager could save your project from completely going up in flames. The sooner you make this decision, the sooner we can help restore confidence to your stakeholders, and have your project back on its intended track.
