Focus on the Work

One message all project managers should convey to the project team members, but often don’t, is to simply focus on their work, their tasks, and their responsibilities. If team members would ignore the superfluous activities of the project and home in on what their responsibilities are, the project would scream along with few interruptions. Of course, this depends on the level of detail you have completed in the planning processes and the people you have to manage on your project team.

This is not to say that team members shouldn’t be involved in project planning—they should! However, once the plan has been created, the team should just get to work, ignore the gossip and the details that don’t involve them, and focus on their duties to complete their tasks. Planning is not, however, a group process that’s completed and never returned to. Planning is a set of iterative, integrated processes that need to happen throughout the project. As issues and needs arise, which they will, the project shifts back into planning mode to discover the best response to issues and concerns that have happened within the project.