Holding Your Team Accountable: Be Clear by Being Specific

How many times have you asked someone to do X and what what was accomplished was Y?

Let's try to fix that today.

Communication is the one skill project managers need to continue to refine, rethink and retool.

And when it comes to keeping your team accountable, communication is key.

Let's simplify it by using one principle: be clear by being specific.

Let's walk thru two quick examples:

Example One:

Download the documentation, review it and send your mark ups to me.

We can dissect the lack of clarity by asking questions:

• Download from where?
  • A Website?
  • Internal Server?
• Which documentation?
  • We are working on three projects, So??
• What kind of review?
  • In depth?
  • Contractual?
  • Functional?
• How should it be marked up?
  • In MS Word?
  • Paper and highlighter?

How to fix: be specific.

Download the Administrative Support documentation from the Vendor's website. Review it for completeness. Ask yourself: Can our helpdesk use this document to support the system? Send me a list of gap areas. We may have to write supplementary material.

Example Two:

Contact the construction manager to find out the status of the trucks arrival on Thursday.

Let's dissect:

• Who is the construction manager?
  • We work with multiple construction companies
  • Which company?
• What kind of truck?
  • Delivery??
    • of what??
• Thursday of this week? next?

And now let's fix this.

Contact Paul Davis at Acme Construction. He is the construction manager for the retail buildings on our site. We have a concrete truck that is suppose to arrive on Thursday the 11th of May. Find out if we are still on schedule for that date. It impacts the arrival of three other crews that are on site on Friday the 12th.

What does specificity have to do with accountability?

Looks at the generic versus the specific statements above.

Which one can you HOLD someone accountable to?

Which one can you provide SPECIFIC feedback when the task is not accomplished?

Specificity does take more work upfront. But it does four things for you:

• Creates clarity
• Allows others to know exactly what needs to be done
• Allows you to provide solid feedback
• Avoids confusion, re-explanation, and frustration

Become a project leader who delivers,

Paul