Project Manaverse

10 tips to get people to do their actions!

As project managers, it’s our responsibility to drive the project forward. As such, we need people on our team to do things and it’s our responsibility to make sure they do them.  If a project is to complete, then someone needs to chase the actions. 

That someone, is us. 

It’s not the most glamorous part of our job, but it is very, very important because if we don’t keep constant pressure on to get things done, the project will drift, and drifting projects do not complete on time and tend to go over budget. 

What is an action?

An action is the thing that someone needs to do.  Often, actions that our team need to do are assigned during a project meeting; it could be an action to confirm a technical question about how a system works, to complete an impact assessment, to write a document or so on and so forth.  

If you set an action during a meeting that all your team members need to do (a simple example could be completing a holiday tracker) then you can guarantee that a proportion of your team will not do that action by the deadline.  I’d even go so far as to call it a mathematical certainty.  I like to illustrate this using a bell curve distribution.  Some people will complete the action early, most on time (with your help), and some will be late.

So why don’t people, us included, get actions done on time?  

It’s because people are busy, and they have other projects and BAU to deal with.  Most likely your action is competing with a long list of other actions, and filling out your holiday tracker is never going to make it to the top of someone’s list.  But that’s okay, as if everyone did their actions on time then there wouldn’t be much need for us project managers!

So, what can we do as PMs to help people complete their actions?   How can we make the action they need to do for us stand out from the others and help it climb the priority list?  I’ll give you ten tips.

Tip 1. Set a deadline.

Number one may be the most important one.  That is, to set a deadline when giving the action.  It may sound obvious but we are all guilty of not doing it.  Don’t be lazy.  Set the deadline.  If it is an action for one person, ask them directly ‘when do you think you can get this done by?’  Or, if you have a reasonable date in mind, you can ask ‘do you think you can get this done by Friday?’

If you can secure a commitment from them during a meeting, especially with lots of witnesses, they will be more likely to do it.  If they give you a date that is too far in the future, then it’s down to you to explain the urgency of the action and ask them ‘is there any way you can get this done earlier?’.  If they say they are not sure and will have to ‘let you know’, then it’s important that you ask them to provide a date for when they will know the date they can have the action done by. Make sure you pin them down with something you can track.  

One more thing to add on due dates – if you know there is a date you really need the action completed by, ensure you set the due date a few days before this, as no matter what you do, there will always be some stragglers!

Tip 2. Get acknowledgement.

It is very important that the action owner actually acknowledges that they are going to take ownership of the action. If they never confirm that they will do it you can’t really be sure they realise they need to do it, let alone do it! It can happen more often than you think. You will assign an action verbally during a meeting but not actually get the verbal confirmation due to a whole variety of reasons. If you are assigning an action to someone during a meeting and they are not even in the meeting, then it especially important you catch up with them afterward to get their agreement. Do not just assume they will read the meeting minutes!

Tip 3. Write the actions down.

Write the action down somewhere.  If you are very slick then you will have an action log on a sharepoint site that you have trained your team to update, but most of us will use email.  If you do not have the action written down anywhere, it becomes very difficult to refer to it when you are chasing up the action.  Again, sounds obvious, but not writing it down is easily done, especially if you have back-to-back meetings all day and you don’t get around to writing up the minutes.  Worst case scenario is that you as the PM don’t remember what the action is.  Developing the habit of documenting actions is a key control that reduces the risk of your project going wrong. 

Tip 4.  Ask to be notified of delays.

Ask to be notified if the action cannot be completed on time.  Say this verbally in the meeting or conversation, and also write it down in the email –

‘If you foresee any issues completing this action on time, please let me know in advance’  

One thing I like to do at the start of my project is sit down with all the team members individually and go through our expectations of each other.  I don’t talk about many, but one thing I always ask is that they let me know if any action or milestone is not going to be completed on time.  Delays are much easier to deal with if you know they are coming. 

Tip 5.  Write ‘action required’ in the email header.  

This especially applies when you have not discussed the action verbally and it’s going out ‘cold’ in an email.  Putting ‘action required’ in the email will often ensure people actually read it in the first place!  

Tip 6.  Make it clear who the action is for.

When requesting actions by email, be sure to specify who you are asking.  Ensure the people who need to do the action are in the ‘to’ field, and not the ‘cc’ field.  Some people set their emails to automatically delete their cc’s and you don’t want that to happen.  Sometimes, I will also list the names within the email body itself.  You don’t want there to be any confusion over who the actions owners are!

Tip 7. Send gentle reminders.  

It’s up to you how many reminders you send, but you don’t want to overdo it by bombarding people. It might only serve to annoy them.  Personally, I tend to send two reminders, one at the midpoint leading up to the deadline, and one the day before.  For example, if I was setting an action on a Monday for the Friday next week, the first reminder would go out the Monday, and the second on the Thursday before the deadline.

We are all human, we forget things. You’ll find that sending a reminder will be a welcomed by most people.

Tip 8.  Name and shame. (Use with caution).

This is a powerful one for group actions and it has great results.  All you need to do is call out who has completed that action and who hasn’t when you send your reminders.  I will typically use a table with all the names and highlight those who have completed it green and those who haven’t red.  No one wants to see their name in red in a group email, so it tends to be good motivation.  However, it can also rub people up the wrong way, so I tend to reserve it for group actions I know I’ll struggle to push people to do.  

Tip 9. Pick up the phone or show up at their desk.  

Inevitably there will be people who miss the action deadline despite agreeing to complete it by the date and having been sent reminders.  In this situation sending email reminders is not going to get you anywhere.  

It’s to time to crack out the big guns; it’s time to use the telephone.  

You really don’t want to be the guy or girl who uses the excuse, ‘Well I sent them an email, but they haven’t replied!’

That’s not the behaviour of a driver. A real project manager will bloody well pick up the phone and hound that person until they respond.  Ping them on instant messenger, leave them voice mails, better yet go and see them.  You’ve got a project to run here.  

I remember once I had a Head of Function not responding to my emails or calls, so I had to take a 5-hr train journey to get to his office and then camp out at his desk. He then had no choice but to speak to me.  Remember, some people just have too many competing priorities and they don’t have a strong enough reason to get your action done. Sometimes, just the fact that you will stop hounding them if they get the action done is enough to get them to complete it!  

Tip 10. Review the actions in your project meetings.

Getting into a routine of reviewing actions in your team meetings is a great way to increase the likelihood of them being completed. I usually have a weekly Project Working Group (PWG) with my team and the first agenda item is always to review the actions from the last meeting. Once you have done this a couple of times, your team will soon learn that you will be asking them for an update during the team meeting, and it can be little embarrassing for them to say they haven’t completed their action in front of the whole team. So, if you make it a habit to review the actions in every team meeting, your team will soon develop the habit of getting the actions done ahead of it.

So those are ten tips to help you get people to do their actions.  Some of them may seem obvious but believe me not everyone does them.  They are all habits we can ingrain in ourselves as project managers.  The more we can discipline ourselves to do these kind of things, the better project managers we will become.