Accept it once, accept it forever

Where do you set the bar for your team?

Chances are it’s pretty high.

But is it really?

Because it doesn’t matter how high you say it is. You’re judged by your actions. Not by your words.

Let me share a quick story of a prime example from a client project earlier this spring.

Every morning they’d do their daily 10min call to keep a pulse on progress and build momentum. I’m a big fan of those meetings, and have written about why & how to run them earlier - read more here.

Early on in the project, the standard in those calls was high. People kept their commitments and escalated early if they knew they wouldn’t make it.

This means a positive meeting with few surprises - an absolute force for building momentum in teams.

But after a few weeks, things started slipping.

People started to miss their deadlines, or worse, miss the meeting. And before they knew it, the team started unraveling and productivity dropped to an all-time low.

So, what was the turning point?

Let’s call him Rick.

Rick is one of the company’s most senior engineers and joined for a week or two to contribute to a key infrastructure piece.

Everyone loved Rick. And people looked up to him too.

But the issue with Rick being so good was that everyone wanted to have him on their team. A classic human bottleneck (read more about bottlenecks and what to do about them in this previous issue).

So Rick was on the team, but only partly. And because he was on 5 other teams at the same time, his reliability to deliver was, well.. spotty.

On a good day.

So what did the PM do?

I mean, it was Rick after all. Without him, they were screwed.

So she let him get away with it.

And with that, she lowered the bar for everyone.

By accepting that once, from one person, she just lowered the collective standard of the entire team.

I’m the oldest of 3 boys, and trust me on this one:

“If he can get away with it, surely I can too…”

It might not even be conscious, but that’s how we’re wired. We look around. We mimic behavior. And especially from the people we look up to.

From people like Rick.

So when the rest of the team saw that it was ok for him to miss a deadline. To deliver something you knew wouldn’t pass testing. Or to simply not show up…

They started doing the same.

This means you now have a downward spiral of team momentum on your hands. Because first, it’s Rick. Then it’s two others.

Before you know it, your AI note taker is the only one to talk to in your morning check-in.

Here’s the thing…

Like many other things in project management, this is about setting expectations. And once you’ve set those, lead based on those expectations instead of managing the consequences of missing them.

And that’s hard. But it’s how it works within your team. It’s how it works with your stakeholders. And it’s how it works raising three boys (ask my mom).

So how do you set those expectations up front?

You can learn all that in a dedicated chapter on setting expectations and aligning stakeholders in my course, Project Management Unraveled.

If you’re ready to up your team game, claim your spot on the waitlist here.

You’ll be the first one to learn more about the upcoming launch and join almost 200 project leaders who have taken the course already.

Talk soon,
Jasper