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Crucial Conversations: Achieve Flawless Execution by Addressing Crucial Problems

By Kerry Patterson and Eric Patten

A consultant’s job is inherently project-based. You go into an organization, initiate a project, diagnose problems, create solutions, and drive for flawless execution. But flawless execution rarely comes without a hitch and, as it turns out, it often doesn’t come at all. In fact, according to research, over 90 percent of major change initiatives fail—costing hundreds of billions of dollars a year. That figure is staggering.

How do you fare? How many of your projects have mostly finished okay, but you missed the schedule, the specs, or the budget? Do you routinely go three-for-three or do one or more factors typically take a hit? Fortunately, if you’re looking to achieve your objectives—without having to go back and constantly recalculate—there are steps you can take to hit your goals every time.

A recent study, Silence Fails: The Five Crucial Conversations for Flawless Execution, conducted by VitalSmarts and the Concours Group discovered something rather remarkable. While it’s true that knowing how to create and manage plans is essential—including forecasting, Gantt charting, and working with project management software—perhaps the most important factor for successful project execution lies in the ability to talk about what’s happening as plans are created and executed.

In previous editions of this newsletter, we have discussed how to set expectations through crucial conversations and how to hold people accountable for those expectations with crucial confrontations. These two skill-sets give us a powerful capability to move our projects from conception to completion.

Let’s look at a few all-too-common project execution scenarios and some of the crucial conversation and crucial confrontation skills you can use to deal with the issues.

Scenario 1: A key member of your team is not dedicating the time she should to your project and is missing deadlines. Accountability is weak. A crucial confrontation needs to happen. So what do you do?

Solution 1: When you encounter that scenario with a team member, your most useful response is to avoid making improper assumptions about why it’s happening. Such problems usually arise from one of two sources: motivation or ability (and sometimes both).

Most people rush to assume that all problems are about motivation—that people don’t do the right thing because they are lazy, don’t care, or don’t like you. In this scenario, with a team member who is not performing up to expectations, the likely assumption one could make is that the person is not committed to the project and is not making it a top priority.

This assumption may or may not be true. But what are other potential causes? What if she doesn’t know how to do the task required? What if she can’t complete the task until another person completes his work, and it’s the other person who is perpetually late? The only way you can know the real reason is to engage in dialog.

As a hint, if you lead with your motivation assumptions, the dialog will not go well. As you explore potential roadblocks with the team member, if they do, in fact, stem from a motivational issue, don’t fall back on your position of power—which, as a consultant, you don’t usually have anyway. Instead, clarify the natural (not imposed) consequences of her actions (“because you missed this deadline, product development couldn’t build the prototype and we were bumped until next month…”).

If the problem is one of ability, focus on removing the ability-barriers. For example, if the problem is that she can’t multi-task, then you need to have a crucial conversation with the project leader to coordinate better use of the team member’s time. The main point is that you need to identify and attack the right problem.

Scenario 2: You hear through the grapevine that one of the leaders you are working with has changed directions, yet again, and that your project is in jeopardy. Sounds like it’s time for another crucial confrontation.

Solution 2: To begin, you may or may not know why the leader changed direction. So first, clarify. There may be a perfectly good reason for the shift. Of course, if direction shifts happen quite frequently—even if the reasons are always good—you may still need to open a dialog because there are bigger issues at play.

Crucial confrontations can occur at any of three levels: you can talk about the content (this one instance), the pattern (“This is the third time this has happened and I’m sensing the emergence of a trend.”), or the relationship (“I feel this pattern of constantly shifting directions may be harming our relationship, or your relationship with the organization.”).

When deciding what to talk about, remember the acronym “CPR” (Content, Pattern, Relationship). If a leader is changing course on you midstream—and this has happened before—talk about the pattern, or possibly about how this is beginning to affect your relationship, or the leader’s relationship with the organization. Shifting directions always has an impact on employee morale, and the more a leader shifts, the greater the effect. That is the bigger issue.

Scenario 3: Someone has requested that a new feature be added to a project that has already been defined. Scope creep is one of the primary reasons projects miss deadlines and die in no-man’s land. This situation calls for a crucial conversation.

Solution 3: First, state your path (your reasons for not wishing to add the new feature), explore the other person’s path (his reasons for wishing to add the new feature), and create mutual purpose (identify an end game you can both agree to).

For instance, you might say, “The way I see it, this new tracking feature will set us back $20,000 and a full month of production. Do you see it differently? Do you feel this feature is important enough to spend the time and money on? We both want the best outcome possible for this project, but it appears that we have different opinions on how to get there. Let’s see if we can find a solution we both agree on.”

Our natural tendency is to defend a position to the death, either passively or aggressively. We need to overcome that natural tendency to work towards a positive outcome for everyone.

When scope begins to creep, there will nearly always be a negative impact on schedule, budget, or both (usually both). If you dismiss feature requests outright, the person making the request will assume that you are not concerned about the quality of the project. The person may even try to go around you and get someone in a position of power to force your hand.

Open a dialog early, when the request is first made. That will give you the opportunity to let the person know that the request is being honestly considered, and that you share concerns about the quality of the project. It will also stop the flood of issues that could surface if you simply say no.

The good news is that despite these inherent and common problems, project failure can be predicted and prevented through the effective use of crucial conversations and crucial confrontations. The most important implication of the Silence Fails research is that just by speaking up, you can make a profound difference, and that doing so skillfully and effectively will dramatically improve your project success.

The study found that those who successfully address one or more of five crucial business issues are 50 to 70 percent more likely to fully achieve project objectives—on budget, on schedule, on spec, and with intact team morale.

You can find out more about the study at www.silencefails.com.

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Kerry Patterson coauthored the New York Times bestsellers Crucial Conversations and Crucial Confrontations. He is an acclaimed keynote speaker, consultant, and chief development officer of VitalSmarts. Patterson has designed and implemented major corporate change initiatives for the past twenty-five years. Find out more at www.vitalsmarts.com.

Eric Patten is a senior consultant for VitalSmarts, an innovator in corporate training and organizational performance. At VitalSmarts he is developing a series of products to enhance Crucial Conversations Training, a powerful tool for improving organizational effectiveness, building teams, and enriching relationships.