I'm in Panic: My Project's End is Near

In this episode, Ricardo discusses the drama that many project managers feel when the end of the project approaches: the fear of the future and the consequences of unemployment. Unlike in previous episodes where he spoke to the project managers, Ricardo now gives a direct message to executives and sponsors about talent management and how to turn project management into an organizational career.

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Episode transcript

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Ricardo (4s): Hello everyone, and welcome to the Five Minutes to PM Podcast! Today I don't want to address the project managers, but I want to address the executives of organizations, the sponsors, and I received a message recently from one of the listeners saying: My Project is coming to an end. Will I be fired? And this is a completely fair question, and it's a fair problem, right? So every single human being and this I include myself, of course, on that looks for a position of natural safety, right? So If I'm working in a project and I know that this project will come to an end in maybe three years, then I will have some kind of time horizon in terms of some stability.
Ricardo (55s): But if I know that My Project is coming to an end in two months, then it is quite a different thing because that would be concerned about, okay, how will I pay my bills and how I will, you know, bring food home after My Project is over and after for example, I lose that job and why I'm addressing this to the executives because the first thing you need to understand that this kind of challenge massive challenge for your organization will happen with your great resources because the great project manager will always look for a more stable. I'm seeing more stable and, more or less, the rewarding thing.
Ricardo (1m 37s): And if she or he has this ability, it will be very easy for them to find something new, but for you, it will be a big challenge in, do you know if you think about the effort over time, you'll see that most of the time, this kind of massive departures from my projects always happen quite close to the end. It's like, imagine you we're in the boat, and you see the beach, but then everybody started jumping on the sea, living the boat. Okay. And most of the time your boat will sink seeing the coast, seeing the beach and this is very bad. Many projects fail on this.
Ricardo (2m 19s): So something like all we have 90 days to finish the project, then suddenly everything starts to collapse. So what is my suggestion to you? So I will propose two suggestions in a very humble way. The first one is that you need to understand that your company needs to identify ways of retaining talent. So competent companies, what they do. They create a certain number of project managers and team members that are extremely competent and knowledgeable about the project management process in the organization. And then they start managing one Project Today, and then they go to another one. Tomorrow they are going to another one.
Ricardo (2m 59s): It's something like a rotation. Most of the time, the project management office, together with the HR department, can handle this so people will not be frightened about saying, Oh, I went to this project, and now I lost my position, or I lost, and then I will lose my job. So this is a very important aspect that you need to think about. The second option is not the best one, but it's something like a workaround on doing that. And I did, in some cases, I have to do that because I didn't have other chances is when you attach some kind of financial compensation, some kind of bonus to the project manager and the team and the key people on your team to the end of your project.

Ricardo (3m 46s): So you would say, Oh, you received one. But if you stay up to the very last day when we reach this, so you create a very clear milestone, then you will receive a bonus of four whatever. And with this bonus, you create some kind of traction in commitment to take that boat out to the coast, it doesn't mean that this person will not leave afterwards, but it will at least make sure that that cycle on your project will come to an end. And of course, you need to put the compensation that will attract people to stay and not to leave. I did this many times because many times I didn't have a chance to find on the team or the clear projects to create a career path on that.
Ricardo (4m 33s): So I did that, and this was some kind of compensation rewarding for finishing the project and compensation for probably not having another one. And most of the time, they stayed up to the end. And of course, afterwards, they left, but it's a tool, but if you don't do a mechanism like that, what is most likely to happen is that when your project comes to an end, people will start living and in the most critical moment of your Project, you will start losing critical people. And this is something that we need to work on trying to avoid at all costs. On the other side is a waste of energy.
Ricardo (5m 16s): If you have someone working in your Project doing an amazing job that you lose this talent because this talent will be required because I'm pretty sure that in your business, projects will go forever. So it's not one project, but one project comes on top of other projects. So these skills will become an asset to your company but always think like that. It's much better to plan something ahead than to handle a firefighting mode to stop the loss of your resources in a critical moment on your project. So think about that. I hope you found this useful, and see you next week with another five minutes PM Podcast.

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