Dealing with Negative Progress

Sometimes projects experience setbacks — already-completed work becomes useless after people discover problems that require new approaches incompatible with work completed. When the pattern is common, its source might lie neither in the projects, nor in the teams that experience setbacks. Sometimes, the source of the pattern lies in the culture of the organization, in the way it's run, or in the way people view negative progress itself.

Here are some insights to help you reduce the likelihood of experiencing negative progress.

Accept the bad news as good news

When you discover unexpected complexity or an unanticipated problem, accept its significance. Be glad you're now aware of the problem — awareness is the first step to resolution. Acknowledgment is the second. The alternative to acknowledgment, denial, is a great way to mess things up even more.

Change your tactics or strategy

When things aren't going well, adjust tactics or strategy. Sometimes people convince themselves that they've made adjustments when they really haven't — they've just renamed or rearranged the old approaches. This happens, in part, because making real adjustments sometimes feels like acknowledging failure. To determine whether the adjustments are real, notice how people feel about them. If some people are really upset about the adjustments, they're probably real.

Increase information distribution

Most negative progress involves information that was known to some, but not enough of the right people. It's likely that more negative progress awaits you, and information sharing can prevent some of it. Encourage people to share information and teach each other more of what they know. See "What Haven't I Told You?," Point Lookout for December 11, 2002.

Take smaller bites

Perhaps project goals are too aggressive — the organization might lack the skills or resources required. Carefully review all activities to determine whether other such overly ambitious efforts are underway. See "Geese Don't Land on Twigs," Point Lookout for June 13, 2001.

Reward honesty and failure

Investigate your recognition practices regarding successes, ethics, and failures. If you aren't honoring at least some failures, you're encouraging their concealment, and that practice increases the likelihood of future negative progress. Rewarding success regularly but only rarely rewarding integrity, honesty, conscientiousness, reliability, originality, or courage drives these other attributes underground. This can increase the risk of setbacks, because these attributes are your best insurance against further surprises.

Reduce overload

If you aren't honoring
at least some failures,
you're encouraging
their concealment

Probably the most effective — and most difficult — change an organization can make is to reduce the number of projects underway. Overloaded people can't focus on anything long enough to do much good. They feel that they can't afford to explore, experiment, or take the kind of risks that lead to breakthroughs. Lighten the load to enhance productivity. See "Make Space for Serendipity," Point Lookout for September 25, 2002.

Any effort to reduce setbacks across the organization could itself encounter setbacks. Since the organization's limitations in preventing or dealing with setbacks can become an issue in such a change, making this change can be particularly difficult.  Top    Next Issue

Are your projects always (or almost always) late and over budget? Are your project teams plagued by turnover, burnout, and high defect rates? Turn your culture around. Read 52 Tips for Leaders of Project-Oriented Organizations, filled with tips and techniques for organizational leaders. Order Now!

The information about the Brooklyn Bridge is in a wonderful book by David McCullough, The Great Bridge: The epic story of the building of the Brooklyn Bridge. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972. Order from Amazon.com

Your comments are welcome

About Point Lookout

Thank you for reading this article. I hope you enjoyed it and found it useful, and that you'll consider recommending it to a friend.

Point Lookout is a free weekly email newsletter. Browse the archive of past issues. Subscribe for free.

Support Point Lookout by joining the Friends of Point Lookout, as an individual or as an organization.

Do you face a complex interpersonal situation? Send it in, anonymously if you like, and I'll give you my two cents.

Related articles

More articles on Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness:

Choices for Widening Choices

Choosing is easy when you don't have much to choose from. That's one reason why groups sometimes don't recognize all the possibilities — they're happiest when choosing is easy. When we notice this happening, what can we do about it?

Encourage Truth Telling

Getting to the truth can be a difficult task for managers. People sometimes withhold, spin, or slant reports, especially when the implications are uncomfortable or threatening. A culture that supports truth telling can be an organization's most valuable asset.

Fill in the Blanks

When we conceal information about ourselves and our areas of responsibility, we make room for others to speculate. Speculation is rarely helpful. It's wise to fill in the blanks.

Wacky Words of Wisdom

Words of wisdom are so often helpful that many of them have solidified into easily remembered capsules. We do tend to over-generalize them, though, and when we do, trouble follows. Here are a few of the more dangerous ones.

Virtual Clutter: II

Thorough de-cluttering at work involves more than organizing equipment and those piles of documents that tend to accumulate so mysteriously. We must also address the countless non-physical entities that make work life so complicated — the virtual clutter.

See also Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness for more related articles.

Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout

Coming October 17: Overt Belligerence in Meetings

Some meetings lose their way in vain attempts to mollify a belligerent participant who simply will not be mollified. Here's one scenario that fits this pattern. Available here and by RSS on October 17.

And on October 24: Conversation Irritants: I

Conversations at work can be frustrating even when everyone tries to be polite, clear, and unambiguous. But some people actually try to be nasty, unclear, and ambiguous. Here's Part I of a small collection of their techniques. Available here and by RSS on October 24.

Coaching services

I offer email and telephone coaching at both corporate and individual rates. Contact Rick for details at rbrenBcthhsWxQTSGeEGhner@ChacBYIRKJkPDfuKaJmYoCanyon.com or (650) 787-6475, or toll-free in the continental US at (866) 378-5470.

Get the ebook!

Past issues of Point Lookout are available in six ebooks:

• Get 2001-2 in Geese Don't Land on Twigs (PDF, USD 11.95)
• Get 2003-4 in Why Dogs Wag (PDF, USD 11.95)
• Get 2005-6 in Loopy Things We Do (PDF, USD 11.95)
• Get 2007-8 in Things We Believe That Maybe Aren't So True (PDF, USD 11.95)
• Get 2009-10 in The Questions Not Asked (PDF, USD 11.95)
• Get all of the first twelve years (2001-2012) in The Collected Issues of Point Lookout (PDF, USD 28.99)

Are you a writer, editor or publisher on deadline? Are you looking for an article that will get people talking and get compliments flying your way? You can have 500 words in your inbox in one hour. License any article from this Web site. More info

Public seminars

The Power Affect: How We Express Our Personal Power

Many people who possess real organizational power have a characteristic demeanor. It's the way they project their presence. I call this the power affect. Some people — call them power pretenders — adopt the power affect well before they attain significant organizational power. Unfortunately for their colleagues, and for their organizations, power pretenders can attain organizational power out of proportion to their merit or abilities. Understanding the power affect is therefore important for anyone who aims to attain power, or anyone who works with power pretenders. Read more about this program.

• A recording of a program presented 6:00 PM June 29 (Eastern Time), Monthly Webinar, Technobility Webinar Series. You can earn 1.0 Category 'A' PDU by viewing this program. View this program now.