Crisis Management – when a key team member jumps off the boat

Crisis Management – when a key team member jumps off the boat

The post is available in a PDF format here.

During the summer of 2008 I have been running a very ambitious project. The work was going right on the schedule and I was preparing to increase my team with a couple of two new members.

Just before the presentation of my project my core team member who was heading the sales team had a conversation with me - he had been planning to leave in order to pursue other goals. I will present the steps I took to prevent further project down time and breaking of the deadlines.

However, I'd like to mention what are the possible future issues that could occur of such crisis.

1. Project downtime
2. Breaking of Deadlines
3. Loss of moral of other team members, leading to reduced performance
4. Re-allocating resources (staff, and money) to other project areas, and making dynamic changes
5. Teaching a new team member into the area which has been abandoned causing loss of time
6. Much more...

Now what were the steps I took to prevent the issues listed above...

First, I tried to understand the guy's reasons for leaving and upon the information try to persuade him to stay and finish the project together. Unfortunately, he had decided this long ago
and I had no chance of getting him back.

Second, I acted on the presentation like nothing happened (hey you back there I hear you calling me a cold-hearth...) - fortunately I had a success and managed to attract the stakeholders.

Third, I had a few options in front of me - wait to recruit a new guy and provide him with the training and making him aware of the product sold, thus losing months; delegate the tasks among the other team members (not a good option since they were very stretched anyway); and finally look in my team/organization for a suitable person for this position and replace his position with a new recruit.

Well, I reviewed my team member's database (if you call an XLS file a database lol), and silently decided to give a few minor tasks dedicated on sales. That would have helped me to decide which would be best for the sales position. I finally ended with a very suitable person for the position - she was not very experienced in the sales area, but at least she knew the product and with a few trainings and support from me she was right on the track.

Finally, we recruited a couple of more people who managed to get into the project very fast, and our team quickly fetched up with the one week delay in the schedule. We even implemented a new centralized system for handling the documentation which has increased performance, and decreased delivery time.

What I learnt from this? Talk to your team members!!! Communication is the way - be aware of your business and their own needs. Make sure their needs meet the needs of the business (I know, I had this on my Economics exam, but it is different on practice). Good suggestion is a team building event - it is not necessary to be something fancy, just a beer in the local pub would be enough.

Make sure you have a backup plan - create different project cases and optimize as much as possible without losing valuable time.