Have a Question? Make a Statement! - A Project Management (General Life, too!) Tip

If you have ever worked on a project, or just worked at all, there’s no doubt that at some point you’ve asked a question and haven’t received an answer. You’re stuck waiting for a decision to be made so you know how to proceed. This can be a real issue when managing a project and various teams, or people, get blocked from moving forward by not having an answer or key decision made. Is your project on schedule? We’ll see...

So what do you do when you asked the question or requested an approval and you still don’t have the answer or approval? If you’re like most people, you probably ask again, right? OK, but now what do you do if you still don’t get a response to your email, voicemail, or conversation? Maybe resend with “ACTION NEEDED” in the subject or you put a disclaimer in the message along the lines of, “if I don’t hear back from you by some date/time, I’ll assume that you are fine with this proposal/change/decision/etc.”?

Even if you have the key stakeholder/s in a meeting and ask the question, often times the answer isn’t an answer at all, it’s a delay or a response that says we need to talk about it some more at a later time or with some different people. Then you leave the meeting and you’re still stuck. What do you do then? You repeat the above steps in the second paragraph!

Well, at that point, you just can’t wait anymore! You need an answer, so I have a better idea. Unfortunately, it involves having to get another meeting with the necessary decision makers, but if they’ve been dancing around your questions or reluctant to make decisions, it just has to be done. When you have that meeting, try this little trick and turn your questions into statements:

• “Do you want to have donuts at the Friday team meeting and is it in the budget?” becomes “We’re serving donuts at the Friday breakfast meeting.”
• "Do you like the navigation menu on the left or on the top?" No, now it’s, “The navigation menu is on top.”
• “What’s your favorite color?” changes into “The best color in the world is orange.”

Obviously, I’ve cartooned the examples, but what it does is provoke a reaction. It’s very difficult for a person to sit there, especially a senior manager or key decision maker, and not voice their disagreement with a statement you make at that point. “We’re going to push back the release date 4 weeks so that we can work on so and so.” If the project sponsor isn’t ok with that statement, they’re going to say so right then.

This little tip works well at home, too. Instead of saying, “Hey Jean, want to go to the Sox game on 8/18?” and getting an answer like, “Yeah, maybe” or “We’ll see”, I’ll say, “Jean, I’m buying tickets for us to the Sox game on 8/18.” Without fail, I’ll know whether or not I’m going to the Sox game right then!