The Deadline Chapter 3, 4 & 5

Have you ever been on a beach and while you can feel the sand in your toes, you smell a fresh air from the sea and start reading a book, maybe with a cool beer in hand?

And then, suddenly, a cold brezze hits your face, your book disappear and your beer is not anymore in your hand. The cold brezze is your office AC, your feet hurt, because of the shoes.
You just realize the sand in your skin is nothing than the stress you feel as shivers because of the deadline project you are delayed on.

I have to admit, is more common for me the second picture than the first one. I’m not a big fan of the beach, but, what I’m trying to say here is, most of the times we are stressed because we can’t get the schedule’s pace. . .

One of the ideas, I got interesting from the book, idea which I think it could have an important meaning in our life as engineers,

If I took the job and indeed I
never did catch up, it would only mean that the schedule was
wrong from the beginning.

Mr. T.

Basically, if we are constantly stressed, ruin things up everyday, not being able of make adjustments nor progress, it’s probably the project administration is failing.

HOW MANAGE WELL?

There are lots of research, numbers and comparisions, but the book stay away from all that stuff, and gives advice of how handling a team in order to be productive and get projects on time.

Get the right people.

Get the right people doesn’t mean «Get the best people, always». Getting the right people involves selecting people who is good at their jobs, which are passionate about what they do, and they care about the project. At least, I think this is the secret recipe.

Getting the right people is also about people who cares about people because they know they are people, too.

Match them to the right jobs.

In personal, I don’t know how to say if a person is right for a job or viceversa, because in my own experience, it’s difficult to evaluate in myself which could be a perfect work for me, even I could consider I know myself enough.

Reading a little bit from the web, in this amazing blog, I found that in order to match up people with jobs, in summary you should understand and focus on the inner motivations of your employees.

Keep them motivated.

As I wrote in the last blog, in my opinion, the secret of productivity is being motivated (almost) always about your project.

When I was a kid, my father always told me my word for everything was «This is BORING». Well, who in the hell would like to keep doing some stuff if that’s boring? Hell no.

In addition, if you chose the right people and they have the correct jobs, it’s probably you don’t need to cheering them up.

Help their tems to jell and stay jelled.

What I can I say here, that teams sports haven’t taught us yet?

CHANGE AND RISK

People say the only constant in life is change. (As an ex Physics Olympiad, I disagree with that, but you get the point).

As manager, you should motivate your colleagues to make the change, and generate the safe enviroment in order to execute those changes.

POSITIVE INFORCEMENT

As leaders, (yeah, managers should be less bossy and more leaders, but, that’s only my opinion). you have to do things to get what you want. Most of the challenges of the everyday’s work, is related with change (It wouldn’t be a challenge if you have to do the same stuff you done before).

Someone could think, It could be great if we act as tyrants and we command all what I want, using our power as a reinforcement (Something that the NNL thought could be fun).

I only have a thinking for this ( because I’m falling asleep and I’d love to go back to my beach dream). I experienced this situation with my sister, ( she is 9 right now). Kids, prefer being treated with respect, giving them trust in their actions.

And, people are basically kids. So, give them some respect to their actions.