We’ve got one month left until the end of the year, one month to close the books on 2011. If you’re like me, you’ve got more on your To Do list than can possibly be done before year end. How does this happen? Most likely it’s because that To Do list does not adequately take account of the dip in productivity levels that inevitably occurs around the holiday season. Unless you are channeling Ebenezer Scrooge, it’s really hard to work all the time when others are enjoying a little holiday cheer. Further, it’s hard to push your colleagues to work at an unremitting pace when they too want to enjoy a little holiday cheer. Finally, how do you get everything done before December 31 when the members of your team have been working hard all year and now are fatigued?
Here are some strategies to help you cope during the year-end push:
- Take a hard look at the calendar. In December, you cannot count on having 20 full working days. There are official holidays when people expect to be away from the office. Then there are scheduled vacation days. And, of course, there are the partial days when an otherwise normal working day is interrupted by office parties, school events, last minute shopping and planning for upcoming celebrations. According to a study conducted by i4cp in 2008, 62% of respondents said that productivity dropped in their organizations during the holiday season. In other words, it can be very difficult to find enough days for focused work in December. If you’re being realistic, what will this do to your ability to meet your year-end deadlines?
- Take a hard look at your project list. When you set your goals in January, December seemed far away and you probably had a rosy view of how much you would be able to accomplish in 12 months. Now you are down to that final challenging month. Unless your project has proceeded without a hitch, you are undoubtedly at this point considering whether it is necessary to cut the scope of your project. As painful as this is, it may be the only way to keep your sanity and your team intact. Professional project managers will tell you that it is extremely challenging to achieve high quality, low cost and short time frames on a project. In fact, according to the project triangle, you can optimize only two of these goals so you’ll have to decide what’s most important: good, fast or cheap. In the context of your 2011 project goals, will you have to cut scope or increase costs in order to meet your time commitments?
- Take a hard look at your team. If your organization is like so many others, you’ve been trying to do more with less for too long. In fact, you may be understaffed and overworked. Add to that the ambient stress of a challenging economic environment and you may well have a team of people who are mentally, emotionally and physically exhausted. How do you re-energize them sufficiently to achieve year-end goals? First, if the exhaustion is due to overwork, consider providing some strategically-timed rest and recreation. After all, even machines need downtime for maintenance. If your team members don’t understand the reason for their work or don’t believe that what they are doing is important, this can result in mental exhaustion. In this case, you will have to improve your priority setting, as well as your communication about the purpose of your team’s work. People will not work above and beyond the call of duty if they have doubts about their mission. Is their mission for December important enough to inspire and energize them?
It’s a race to the finish. Unless you approach that race tactically, you could end up crippling your team and falling short of your goals. And, to compound the pain, you may miss out on the joy and hopefulness of the season. Why risk it?
[Photo Credit: Angela Mabray]
Above and Beyond KM 