Project managers (PM’s) are rubbish aren’t they.  You give them a job to do and they get too involved in things they shouldn’t, they don’t get involved in things they should and you have to sort their mess.  They create paperwork for no reason, but haven’t got the information when you need it.  They just don’t do anything but spend a lot of time not doing it.  Then the projects late, over budget and doesn’t look like or do what you wanted it to. 
 
It’s frustrating!  These are all common things I’ve heard about PM’s and accused PM’s of!  Whether it’s someone who’s come through the ranks or someone with experience.  Either way do you feel like you have to make all the decisions for them, like they just don’t get it and you have to step in to save the day!  Would you be better off doing it yourself!
 
IDEA
Here’s the thing … you would!  This is your business after all, you know what needs to be done and why.  You run it off instinct, you’re generally right and it’s got you where you are today.  Then you got busy and it seemed the right thing to do.  You needed someone else to look after some of the project management, there are only 24 hours in a day after all.
 
There is a tipping point where you just have to let go.  This is also the tipping point where you have to become more mature in how you run your projects to succeed.
 
SYNOPSIS
You can’t obviously look after everything and you need someone else to take responsibility.  Someone who knows how to run projects and is reliable and can make decisions like you would.
 
SOLUTION
If you ran the project you would instinctively know what the business needed, this is why you would defiantly run the project better than anyone else.  You need to translate this for the project manager to understand.
 
But how?
 
Firstly, don’t separate the business from the project.  Every project is different, but your business is why you’re here.  The business and the project have to meet for both to be a success, don’t let them drift apart.
 
Secondly, if you don’t get off to a good start with outlining why you are doing the project and the priorities, people will either not be able to make decisions or make their own decisions and that is where it all goes wrong.   Where people become rubbish!
 
You need to set the why and the way and then, if you have one, the PM adapts that to the project, not make the project fit the way…. And that is the skill you are paying for and the ones that can incorporate those business needs the best are the best PM’s. 
 
But they will all be rubbish if they have to make it up for themselves, they aren’t you!  People will have their own agenda and ideas.  Understanding why you are doing the project and being able to explain it is the bedrock for a more mature managed company and project.  It’s your company lead it, without doing everything!
 
So if your PM’s are rubbish what do you do?
 
You have three options.
 
1.Get rid of your PM’s,  if you don’t have a strategy that you can pass on, don’t bother with PM’s, you’re wasting everyone’s time.  Create a hybrid approach to running projects, where people who know the business all take some responsibility and muck in to run the project and you can make decisions when things go wrong.  I know some nice companies that operate this way.
 
2.Get someone in who understands how to create the link between the business and the project and can help you implement it.  I can guarantee you’ll see some benefits.
 
3.Take control yourself and work out a way to make sure everyone knows how and why your projects are being done so you can stand back and let them make decisions as you would.
 
If you want any advice on either of the 3 approaches, I’d love to talk about them with you.  I’m sure I’ll learn something to.
 
And if your PM'S are brilliant, well that is down to you!

Most of these blogs are about project management and how it can help you, but there is no point in talking it up where it can’t be.  So I’ll just get on with it, project management can’t increase turnover.  Sales, production, design, marketing probably some more things I can’t think of, these are the direct influences on turnover.   Bring it in, send it out.  This is where the glamour and importance is! Right?
 
Management, finance, HR is there then to facilitate the process of filling in the blanks between bringing it in and sending it out.  None of these functions are a standalone business without a product or something someone wants.  These are the boring bits! Right?
 
The saying goes turnover is vanity, profit is sanity, or you can get in as much work as you want but if you are spending more to get it out the other end, you’re not deemed a successful company and you won’t be around for long! 
 
There are a few reasons you may want to not care about being profitable, but for the purpose of this, let’s talk about the basic commercial benefit from a project …. to make some money …. so we can enjoy spending it on something else.
 
IDEA
If we are all in this to make some money, the more we make the more we can spend and have more fun, now or in the future. We can do perceived good things or bad things with that money, not my position to judge, but without it you aren’t buying owt, no one’s having fun!
 
So how do you make the profit as large as possible?
 
Let’s look at the variables. Cost, quality and time..
 
Cost, this is very quantifiable and relatively easy to control in advance.
 
Quality, a bit less quantifiable but very subjective and controlled by the cost, which can be controlled in advance.
 
Time, this is extremely variable, both in: subjectivity and how it can be measured in advance.
 
The key to using time well is management, management doesn’t produce anything but it facilitates it. Better or quicker …. and time is a strange thing, you can’t use it again, once it’s gone … puff …. its gone! If you don’t use it, it will use itself, its head strong like that, time is always consuming itself. Once consumed it won’t come back and therefore to the business a massive ongoing risk. It’s a leaking bucket.

SYNOPSIS

So to do fun things, we need to make a profit, the profit comes not from having a viable product or contract but from getting that product out the door for less than it came in for.

Cost and quality are generally closed cases from the start, we only have time left to control.

Better profit is ultimately about time …… sales, production, marketing et al are where the glamour is.  Management is about producing the results, to have some fun.  The better the results the more fun we can have!

Some of us are lucky, we have double the fun enjoying managing and the results of profit, we don’t care for the glamour, that’s for Instagram. 

But here’s a thing … you can still get double the fun even if you don’t like managing!!

SOLUTION

Be boring, concentrate on getting your management better … because if you do it well … time can be doubled and the fun can be doubled!

Here’s how…. If you make something with the resources you have and it takes 6 hours it takes 6 hours.   That is having experience and knowledge of what you are producing, to improve it you could introduce some machine that makes it quicker, there is a cost.

If you have 6 hours to manage a task it could take 6 hours.  If you have the experience and knowledge.  To make that quicker you could introduce a consistent tailorable process, become more management mature and it’s free! 

Once you understand management, you understand how to influences how quick you can make something, by getting the information quicker or clearer, making sure the order is right or knowing who is doing what.

And in lies the magic.  If you make things quicker you save money by not using the time, but you also have that unused time to do something else with.  You double the profit on not using that time!
 
Use it to make something else … or …. use that time to gain more experience and knowledge to make the work even quicker, allow time to learn!

So to get double the profits, concentrate on the management, concentrate on being boring and we’ll all have much more fun!

Is there a project where you don’t have to spend anything?  Whether its money or time and the less you spend the better the profit.  I’ve worked for companies where they try to monitor every penny …. others that trust you to spend …… and ones that fluctuate between the two depending on which way the wind is blowing.  This last version is the worst sort, no one knows where they stand, recipe for disaster for getting things done and guaranteed to add to a negative culture.
 
The approach to spending is important on a project and can greatly influence management time.  You can’t let all spending go unauthorised, it would get out of control. You can’t watch every penny, it’s just counter productive as you spend more time monitoring.
 
A basic authorisation process can easily waste an hour of working time; to ask, fill in the information or whatever the process, the requesters time and the authorisers time could easily put £50 on the cost of that item through time spent no matter what software you use.  At this rate you will be whipping out your profit on all transactions up to £500 ….. depending on your markup!
 
There is also the delay in waiting for the approval.  So frustrating for both the employees who can’t get on and the authoriser who is now a bottleneck for the project and is getting told they are holding up the project.
 
IDEA
If you could trust everyone it would be easy!  Yes, but what about the company cashflow, large expenditure at the wrong time will cause issues.

You need to find a balance and this is where managing by exception is really helpful.

Managing by exception means that you have a process but there are exceptional circumstances that you don’t use the process and get on with it.  In this case a designated limit to spend under.  A limit that it is more costly to authorising under or a limit you trust your employees to spend to.  Simple!

Simple enough, but every project is different, every employee is different.  Setting a £500 limit on a £5000 job means one transaction is 10% of the job, could be issues if it’s wrong!  Setting a £500 limit on a £500,000 job is only 0.001% great, but you will have hundreds of these to approve and those £50 administrative costs to get approval will very quickly mount up … along with the work while they wait for the bottle neck to clear.

SYNOPSIS
You’ll want to find a balance, somewhere between letting people get on and not wanting the profits to waste away unmonitored.
​
SOLUTION
As with every project, the actions need to be proportional to the project, its risk, size and scope. 

To do this with exception managing, you need to start off with a generic limit per project that the company is happy with the risk.  Say 0.01% of the project value or manhours, this can then be greater for specific people with greater knowledge of the budget or procurement understanding, or keep it simple, the same across the board.

This limit can then be adjusted at the start of a project and be lowered for less complex projects or increased for more complex ones.  Tailored to be lower if the project has a low margin to protect profit, higher if there is more profit to play with but program is tight and you need to get on. 

Tailoring is the key to exception managing, it will only work in the long term for the company if it is specific to the project.  The company sets what they think their risk tolerance is and the project team can get on with getting the work done, knowing where the boundaries lie.

To be even more exceptional, exception management can be used in the client user relationship when change comes into play.  Set a lower limit for the cost of change that both sides that don’t claim for unless the change exceeds it.  Either in overspend by the user or a cost saving for the supplier.  It will stop slowing the project down with minor issues!
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So be exceptional…….. make sure you get the balance right and make the best profits you can.

Background
What’s a small project to you?  It’s all relative, I would suggest that a large project is one where you sub-contract a proportion of the work because its beyond your resources and a small project is a project that only uses up a maximum 50% of your resources at a time.  Both large and small projects have their good points and obviously a balanced portfolio of projects is the ideal, we don’t live in an ideal world, so we all do what we need to do.

An initial thought might be that a large project is going to be more draining on management than a small one.  You’ll need to manage more people, there are more opportunities for something to go wrong, bigger numbers involved, larger items to cost you time and money and so a small project if something goes wrong will mean you won’t lose as much money.  So that’s a winner, right?  No need to worry about them!

Idea
There is a but though. Yes in terms of turnover the losses will be worse on a larger project, but in terms of profit you need to beware.
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Say for instance you have a larger project £500k made up of 220K of costs and 220K of labour 80k profit and a smaller project £50k, 22k costs 22k labour 8k profit.#

Both projects have a issue with communication and you end up having to reissue drawing information 3 times because you’ve not interpreted the clients wishes correctly.  Each issue uses up 2 hours management time and 4 hours design time.

That’s 18 hours at £25 per hour = £450.

On the larger project that 0.566% of the profit gone but on the smaller project its 5.6% of the profits gone.  20 of those mistakes and the profits totally gone.  You’ll probably also use up more management time arguing to try and save you money, that’s not a good conflict to have (there is good conflict btw).

This example would be for a bespoke manufacturer but for a designer the profits are reduced even more as you don’t have cost profits to help you out!  That example given could easily be 10% of profits gone for a designer!

Synopsis
As you can see, the effect an issue has on profit is magnified the smaller the project.  You could just put in a contingency and accept that things will go wrong.  Or you could employ the view of a bigger organisations who’s small projects are a lot bigger than yours and look at maximising profits and benefits when you can and use a contingency where it’s needed (That would be for events you have no control over, something for another day).
​
Solution
This is where understanding project management maturity comes in useful.  It’s a bit more complex than this but essentially Project management maturity is elevating how you run projects from.

1. Being aware that you are running projects... to
2. Repeating how you run projects.... to
3. Defining how you run projects..... to
4. Managing projects.......... and at its most mature
5. Optimising projects. 

You can operate at any level and it’s not wrong to, but to start to get the best out of your projects and have less frustration, then just getting to stage 3 where you define how you run projects will start to make a big difference, in terms of profit and ease.

At this level you have a process that covers and mitigates issues pre them happening that’s not administrative heavy and aligned to the business.  It won’t negate change and threats, but will greatly reduce issues like communication breakdown happening.  These sorts of issues are how the profits slip away quickly on small projects.

Small projects are great, manageable, much more fun, you feel part of them and they spread the risk for the company.  But to get the best out of them, manage them well and manage them with maturity. 
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No one likes an immature project after all … well apart from maybe your mom!