I became a manager at my job last January. I've apparently been too easygoing with my team (formerly peers, now my staff) because I'm getting phone calls from clients that my folks are not meeting deadlines and aren't communicating. I know, I think we all know, that staying in GOOD communication with clients is the most important thing to avoid issues.
I've said many times that we need to touch base with clients weekly at minimum. But getting anyone to actually DO it seems impossible. We're all so busy doing the work (and trying to get new work) that the communication - updates, draft deliverables, answering emails - falls by the wayside.
I want to offer a carrot not a stick. Has anyone come up with a strategy to ensure that my folks consistently:
1. Answer every email within 24 hours
2. Send a weekly update email stating status of the work
3. Follow up on requests for information that the client have not responded to yet
4. ...etc.?
I swear this shit was easier before email. And before 50 different apps like Teams/Asana/Miro whatever else.
Donna, we can't even get our staff to fill in their time sheets so that they get paid even with weekly reminder emails. Only way is to keep that stick close at hand and hover over them until they understand that communication is part of the job.
Yeah, that’s not allowed but also I’m a low level manager at a large company (nonprofit) so it’s not my call to make.
Nov 3, 24 8:23 am ·
·
proto
Not acknowledging an email from legitimate business partners within one or two business day bugs me too. I stretch it to a couple of days because I acknowledge that sometimes everyone needs a little grace period. I certainly do not expect immediate responses.
It sounds like your issue is that you haven’t been able to compartmentalize business from friendship. As Jordan Peterson would say: you are too “agreeable” and want to avoid conflict. Is your loyalty toward your firm goals or toward being at peace with everyone? If you can answer that question, you will get your answer if you are true to it. Business and friendship only work if you are able to compartmentalize.
Being Demanding in a fair way is a way to earn respect. Right now your staff is being disrespectful because they know they can get away with not following your directions and not being punished for it.
No- there is no way of getting results in business without setting boundaries for workability. It’s not personal, just business as they say
Asana and similar is oddly harder than the old days when we tracked hours and tasks daily with paper and colored pens. It's something psychological. Computer stuff is not real or something like that...
About the communication thing, the best system I have seen is when one person is put in charge of communication for a project. An assigned task, clearly pointed out and required/expected. IWhen it doesnt happen it becomes a point of discussion for job performance, and coaching if needed. When I see that fail is when there is more than one person doing the communication task. Each assumes or hopes someone else will do it, and it gets lost in the wash.
It does not need to be about the Jordan Peterson macho thing. That seems to me about as close to good practice as fantasy football is to an actual footbal team. IE, connected to it, but not the real thing. I have seen that too though and it can work, though it is easily toxic and not a good way to run an office and keep talent.
Maybe more than a carrot stick approach it could help to make it about coaching with what needs to be prioritized and make sure communication as top of list. Client facing companies I imagine need to put communication forward even more than normal practice.
@Donna , .Managing client expectation is always a hard gig and I am no way near an expert on this. But, to me , you're setting up to fail if you ( your team ) need to answer every email within 24 hrs.
From my experience , agreed expectations / protocol / rule of engagement (whatever you want to call) among all stakeholders at the beginning of the project is the most crucial thing in delivering/managing a good outcome.
I'm also a big fan of assign a name to a task in my team (with a supervision from me and other senior staff) . Weekly catch-up at the start of the week to see what everyone is planning to do during the week and also to clear up any outstanding items from previous weeks, is also a good idea ( everybody is doing this isnt it / not a fresh new idea at all , sorry)
1. bi-weekly meetings with the client, with on-going written meeting minutes that track action items (& set weekly meetings with your team, 30-45min convo, Monday AM and Thursday AM to check in that they did their work)
2. be transparent. show your co-workers the complaints; (assuming your client is writing this to you)
other than that be clear about expectations, set minor deadlines in order to achieve actual deadlines, give your team expected time in order to complete tasks. if you're in a larger office environment, how are other project managers handling their teams? I would expect your office to have a standard of care. oh, and identify the critical path for them! I know i get bogged down in daily tasks sometimes because of something i'm interested in or just would rather focus on. sometimes, myself included, we need that conductor to set us on the right path
I would start off by asking your team members why they are not meeting deadlines and communicating with clients.
Then I would layout the policies / procedures you've outlined in you OP.
When I moved into management type positions I noticed a few things.
Team members were a bit nervous to approach me as they would before because I am now 'in charge'. I let people know they can still come an 'talk shop / complain' with me as before.
The management styles of previous PM's had an impact on how team members interacted with me. If previous PM's only wanted people to do things when told in certain formats (email, dm, in person) that's what the team members expected to happen with me. I spoke with team members and explained how I'd be communicating and what I expected of them.
Individual team member have specific management styles that work with them. Some prefer direct conversation. Some like emails, some like redlines / cartoon sets. As a PM we need to figure out what works for each team member and try to accommodate them.
It's an ongoing process. I'm sorry to say that the review and tweaking of you management style will never be over.
My first question when reading your post: how is it that your clients had to tell you there was a problem?
Not meaning to needlessly attack you, but maybe to point to a solution. You should know this before it becomes an issue.
In my office everyone from drafter to principal can see what's going in and out because there's a project email that is copied on every correspondence, and everyone on the team is "subscribed" to that email (obviously there's a more exclusive channel for confidential stuff). So, if someone isn't responding to or completing communications, it's clear to everyone. And it's clearest to the one who is aware of what each team member should be doing what: the manager.
In other words, your staff may need prompting, not reminding, and you should be able to do that by "seeing" what has or has not been done yet.
Other thoughts: I tend to put off things that stress me out, maybe some of them don't feel comfortable performing the task quickly. Like, they may need training on how to do it. Another thought: my projects have usually involved weekly team meetings. This could be a forum where pressure is applied by their work being public in a way. Obviously, there's a delicate balance between people reporting their progress and shaming lackluster performance in a toxic way.
At the end of the day, I echo what other's have said above. It's not about adopting big daddy JP authority, I think it's actually being neutral and emotionally present regarding the facts. The facts being that folks aren't doing their job, or don't know how to do it. They know that in the abstract communication is important, but you have to bring them down to earth and make it unavoidable to change how they work. In a productive way! It's totally possible.
Sorry to clarify: *neutrality regarding people not doing their jobs right means communicating through tone and language that they're not stupid, unskilled, bad people because they're not doing their job correctly. As your post shows, if something isn't working then it's everyone's responsibility. There should be no shame or distress in telling people they're not doing things right.
You're correct, graphemic, that I should have recognized the issue sooner. I was juggling so many of my own responsibilities that I neglected tor realize that my PM had sent a draft report that I hadn't reviewed, then had delayed two meetings to discuss it, and suddenly the client hadn't heard from them for several weeks. The reality is in the back of my mind I knew I might need to step in but I was hoping for the best as I kept all my own balls in the air.
95% of my own success comes from this simple email line: "We will be proceeding accordingly unless directed otherwise within 48 hours [or a week, whatever]."
I know this doesn't help your problems with your staff, but I encourage my own to use this Lancashire language very often, and I swear it eliminates half of the issues we normally see.
We do primarily commercial retail work & receive some laughable "responses are due by _____" emails from people with short timeframe requests. If you have a legitimate fire drill we're always willing to try to be accommodating, but every now we have to remind architect's working on interior tenant work that we're not going to drop everything to review their set at a whim. Same goes for GC submittals.
GC Issues Submittal on 10/31/24, also notes critical return date 10/31/24, or better, he never actually submitted the submittal in the first place, and the submittal has a date on it 10/8/24 and is due 10/8/24, but you get it on 10/24/24 - come on man!
We do this as well RJ87. If a project is due to the owner on 10/15/24 then all consultant drawings are due to us on 10/17/24.
Nov 4, 24 4:50 pm ·
·
pj_heavy
some tasks though would be impossible to properly respond within that time frame especially if it evolves other consultants. If it’s simply a yes / no Q, look at those dwgs bla bla… sure thing
Nov 5, 24 2:55 am ·
·
OddArchitect
I will give a deadline for things and always ask the team to contact me if they have concerns about meeting the deadline. Sometimes the concerns are legitimate and we revise the deadline.
Nov 6, 24 3:09 pm ·
·
RJ87
My comment wasn't solely about the timeline being unreasonable, but the fact that they are trying to provide a deadline at all. Standard submittal return timelines out outlined in the project manual for contractors to know in advance & a TI team at a different architecture firm just doesn't get to tell someone when it's "due".
I think it's all in the wording, you can "ask" for things. But many times we get an email that literally says "Deadline for return: ___."
I'd make a counter point that if you're sending weekly updates about CD production to clients it's an inefficient use of everyone's time. Whenever I'm asked where we're at in a project the answer is "we're chugging along for our delivery date of ___ as scheduled."
It will usually be the same answer whether we've started or not. We agreed upon a specified delivery date, how the sausage is made is our problem.
Different story if the client is openly complaining about the lack of communication, depends on the project type, etc. though.
Don't you guys have daily meetings on the project? As irritating as that is, the WFH setting has made sure we have a quick meeting almost every morning for each project, with the team leader, PM and designers. Sometimes, before an important deadline, the Principals also join in.
My team each have 4-6 projects simultaneously (not architecture - feasibility studies, site due diligence, etc. We're not an architecture firm.). So we have weekly one-on-ones where we talk through the projects they are each working on, but if I ask "How is the Coupon project going, do you need my help on anything?" and they assure me it's all fine I'd rather believe them than spend the time chasing down the reality by checking emails and the contents of the job file. I've consistently told them that if a difficult conversation has to be had with the client I am here to do it, I will take the hit for them, but I think they're embarrassed to tell me when something is headed sideways.
I'm going to say something that might piss off a lot of folks here... Apologies ahead of time.
But isn't it the PM and PIC's job to communicate with the client? Maybe for smaller projects you have team members communicating with client directly. But on larger projects, communicating with the client, managing client expectation is how PM's and PIC's earn their keeps. The rest of the team (designers, technical architects...) are do-ers who should be insulated from the client's whims.
If my PM spoiled the clients by training them to expect immediate responses, and the clients discover they could also get answers from me, I would usually let the ball drop a few times, ignore the clients a bit to train them to return to their designated "baby sitters", while I go and solve their architectural problems (what they pay ME for).
If the majority of your team is saddled with the burden of keeping your clients feeling important, it sounds like a team structure and staffing problem, not necessarily a communication problem.
The whole "get your people to communicate more" smacks of wishful thinking... It's not like us do-ers can somehow create more time. A well crafted response to clients takes time, a clear response to keep you the boss informed takes time. What are you willing to give up for it? Fewer details? Missing spec sections? Wrong color of the front door?
By 'do-er'? If you mean people doing drawings, specs, coordination, ect? If so, then it's vital that they communicate with the PA's and PM's.
In smaller firms like mine (15 people ) it's not uncommon for EVERYONE to communicate with the entire team to some degree. This includes clients. The less experienced peoples communication with clients and are typically limited to responding to requests for drawings, small changes to the work, ect. The PM and PA are always copied in on these communications. Larger items like schedule, overall design, budget, ect are handled by the PA's and PM's.
This is regardless of the project size ($5million to $200 million in my firm's case)
It seems like that in Donna's OP the team isn't meeting deadlines and responding clients small requests. That's totally within their responsibilities.
Nov 5, 24 9:31 am ·
·
graphemic
In my organization, CHC, I would kind of agree. Rather, the PM would never expect us do-ers to interface with the client like that. I chalk it up to different firm size/structure or projects. There are so many different ways to practice. I was actually thinking of asking Donna for more info about this point, just out of curiosity.
I think our firm is set up this way because we have more experienced people in the office. I've worked a other larger firms where anything and everything had to be sent to the PM and then the PM would send it to the client and consultants.
I agree with your approach Crazy House Cat. But I'm not practicing traditional architecture, so it's a different relationship. We do real estate consulting for nonprofits, so it's feasibility studies, financial analysis, site due diligence, market scans, test fits, etc. Very different timescale and scope.
Regardless of the project type, it's critical to establish the primary contacts from all stakeholders. I realize I sound like chatgtp here, but it's true regardless of scale, type, or complexity. To do otherwise is risky IMO.
We do have a primary contact for clients / design team. This is typically the PM and PA. Those in our firm outside of those roles will be limited to things like sending drawings or documents to clients and consultants at the direction of the PA and PM.
How do you communicate consistently during a project?
Help needed, you guys.
I became a manager at my job last January. I've apparently been too easygoing with my team (formerly peers, now my staff) because I'm getting phone calls from clients that my folks are not meeting deadlines and aren't communicating. I know, I think we all know, that staying in GOOD communication with clients is the most important thing to avoid issues.
I've said many times that we need to touch base with clients weekly at minimum. But getting anyone to actually DO it seems impossible. We're all so busy doing the work (and trying to get new work) that the communication - updates, draft deliverables, answering emails - falls by the wayside.
I want to offer a carrot not a stick. Has anyone come up with a strategy to ensure that my folks consistently:
1. Answer every email within 24 hours
2. Send a weekly update email stating status of the work
3. Follow up on requests for information that the client have not responded to yet
4. ...etc.?
I swear this shit was easier before email. And before 50 different apps like Teams/Asana/Miro whatever else.
Donna, we can't even get our staff to fill in their time sheets so that they get paid even with weekly reminder emails. Only way is to keep that stick close at hand and hover over them until they understand that communication is part of the job.
They NEVER submit their damn timesheets WTF?!? Even before I became a manager I always submitted my timesheets every Friday afternoon WTF LOL
We’re not permitted to not pay people. We’ve threatened not paying as a pseudo serious joke but it did not work.
Yeah, that’s not allowed but also I’m a low level manager at a large company (nonprofit) so it’s not my call to make.
Not acknowledging an email from legitimate business partners within one or two business day bugs me too. I stretch it to a couple of days because I acknowledge that sometimes everyone needs a little grace period. I certainly do not expect immediate responses.
......I just finished 12 weeks of time sheets.
Pffft. A real architect waits until December to do their timesheets.
OddA....our year end was Oct 30. I submitted my times sheets Oct 29 & 30 :D
It sounds like your issue is that you haven’t been able to compartmentalize business from friendship. As Jordan Peterson would say: you are too “agreeable” and want to avoid conflict. Is your loyalty toward your firm goals or toward being at peace with everyone? If you can answer that question, you will get your answer if you are true to it. Business and friendship only work if you are able to compartmentalize.
Being Demanding in a fair way is a way to earn respect. Right now your staff is being disrespectful because they know they can get away with not following your directions and not being punished for it.
No- there is no way of getting results in business without setting boundaries for workability. It’s not personal, just business as they say
People are still using JP? I thought that hack’ stupid jive died out years ago.
Non, it did, but some folks didn't get the memo.
The first step in better communication is to not listen to JP.
Yo, Dragons are real.
Asana and similar is oddly harder than the old days when we tracked hours and tasks daily with paper and colored pens. It's something psychological. Computer stuff is not real or something like that...
About the communication thing, the best system I have seen is when one person is put in charge of communication for a project. An assigned task, clearly pointed out and required/expected. IWhen it doesnt happen it becomes a point of discussion for job performance, and coaching if needed. When I see that fail is when there is more than one person doing the communication task. Each assumes or hopes someone else will do it, and it gets lost in the wash.
It does not need to be about the Jordan Peterson macho thing. That seems to me about as close to good practice as fantasy football is to an actual footbal team. IE, connected to it, but not the real thing. I have seen that too though and it can work, though it is easily toxic and not a good way to run an office and keep talent.
Maybe more than a carrot stick approach it could help to make it about coaching with what needs to be prioritized and make sure communication as top of list. Client facing companies I imagine need to put communication forward even more than normal practice.
Curious: how do you manage communication when the principal is a control freak?
What would JP say to do?
@Donna , .Managing client expectation is always a hard gig and I am no way near an expert on this. But, to me , you're setting up to fail if you ( your team ) need to answer every email within 24 hrs.
From my experience , agreed expectations / protocol / rule of engagement (whatever you want to call) among all stakeholders at the beginning of the project is the most crucial thing in delivering/managing a good outcome.
I'm also a big fan of assign a name to a task in my team (with a supervision from me and other senior staff) . Weekly catch-up at the start of the week to see what everyone is planning to do during the week and also to clear up any outstanding items from previous weeks, is also a good idea ( everybody is doing this isnt it / not a fresh new idea at all , sorry)
long time reader/lurker, first time poster
I would strongly recommends two things;
1. bi-weekly meetings with the client, with on-going written meeting minutes that track action items (& set weekly meetings with your team, 30-45min convo, Monday AM and Thursday AM to check in that they did their work)
2. be transparent. show your co-workers the complaints; (assuming your client is writing this to you)
other than that be clear about expectations, set minor deadlines in order to achieve actual deadlines, give your team expected time in order to complete tasks. if you're in a larger office environment, how are other project managers handling their teams? I would expect your office to have a standard of care.
oh, and identify the critical path for them! I know i get bogged down in daily tasks sometimes because of something i'm interested in or just would rather focus on. sometimes, myself included, we need that conductor to set us on the right path
This is an excellent question.
I would start off by asking your team members why they are not meeting deadlines and communicating with clients.
Then I would layout the policies / procedures you've outlined in you OP.
When I moved into management type positions I noticed a few things.
Good Luck! You've got this!
My first question when reading your post: how is it that your clients had to tell you there was a problem?
Not meaning to needlessly attack you, but maybe to point to a solution. You should know this before it becomes an issue.
In my office everyone from drafter to principal can see what's going in and out because there's a project email that is copied on every correspondence, and everyone on the team is "subscribed" to that email (obviously there's a more exclusive channel for confidential stuff). So, if someone isn't responding to or completing communications, it's clear to everyone. And it's clearest to the one who is aware of what each team member should be doing what: the manager.
In other words, your staff may need prompting, not reminding, and you should be able to do that by "seeing" what has or has not been done yet.
Other thoughts: I tend to put off things that stress me out, maybe some of them don't feel comfortable performing the task quickly. Like, they may need training on how to do it. Another thought: my projects have usually involved weekly team meetings. This could be a forum where pressure is applied by their work being public in a way. Obviously, there's a delicate balance between people reporting their progress and shaming lackluster performance in a toxic way.
At the end of the day, I echo what other's have said above. It's not about adopting big daddy JP authority, I think it's actually being neutral and emotionally present regarding the facts. The facts being that folks aren't doing their job, or don't know how to do it. They know that in the abstract communication is important, but you have to bring them down to earth and make it unavoidable to change how they work. In a productive way! It's totally possible.
Sorry to clarify: *neutrality regarding people not doing their jobs right means communicating through tone and language that they're not stupid, unskilled, bad people because they're not doing their job correctly. As your post shows, if something isn't working then it's everyone's responsibility. There should be no shame or distress in telling people they're not doing things right.
I tell myself that I'm not doing things correctly all the time. ;)
You're correct, graphemic, that I should have recognized the issue sooner. I was juggling so many of my own responsibilities that I neglected tor realize that my PM had sent a draft report that I hadn't reviewed, then had delayed two meetings to discuss it, and suddenly the client hadn't heard from them for several weeks. The reality is in the back of my mind I knew I might need to step in but I was hoping for the best as I kept all my own balls in the air.
Totally. This is a fun discussion, too, thanks for the prompt!
95% of my own success comes from this simple email line: "We will be proceeding accordingly unless directed otherwise within 48 hours [or a week, whatever]."
I know this doesn't help your problems with your staff, but I encourage my own to use this Lancashire language very often, and I swear it eliminates half of the issues we normally see.
We do primarily commercial retail work & receive some laughable "responses are due by _____" emails from people with short timeframe requests. If you have a legitimate fire drill we're always willing to try to be accommodating, but every now we have to remind architect's working on interior tenant work that we're not going to drop everything to review their set at a whim. Same goes for GC submittals.
Oh. Don't get me started with this...
GC Issues Submittal on 10/31/24, also notes critical return date 10/31/24, or better, he never actually submitted the submittal in the first place, and the submittal has a date on it 10/8/24 and is due 10/8/24, but you get it on 10/24/24 - come on man!
We do this as well RJ87. If a project is due to the owner on 10/15/24 then all consultant drawings are due to us on 10/17/24.
some tasks though would be impossible to properly respond within that time frame especially if it evolves other consultants. If it’s simply a yes / no Q, look at those dwgs bla bla… sure thing
I will give a deadline for things and always ask the team to contact me if they have concerns about meeting the deadline. Sometimes the concerns are legitimate and we revise the deadline.
My comment wasn't solely about the timeline being unreasonable, but the fact that they are trying to provide a deadline at all. Standard submittal return timelines out outlined in the project manual for contractors to know in advance & a TI team at a different architecture firm just doesn't get to tell someone when it's "due".
I think it's all in the wording, you can "ask" for things. But many times we get an email that literally says "Deadline for return: ___."
I'd make a counter point that if you're sending weekly updates about CD production to clients it's an inefficient use of everyone's time. Whenever I'm asked where we're at in a project the answer is "we're chugging along for our delivery date of ___ as scheduled."
It will usually be the same answer whether we've started or not. We agreed upon a specified delivery date, how the sausage is made is our problem.
Different story if the client is openly complaining about the lack of communication, depends on the project type, etc. though.
I generally agree with this, but yes in this case it was definitely the complete LACK of communication that was the issue.
Don't you guys have daily meetings on the project? As irritating as that is, the WFH setting has made sure we have a quick meeting almost every morning for each project, with the team leader, PM and designers. Sometimes, before an important deadline, the Principals also join in.
My team each have 4-6 projects simultaneously (not architecture - feasibility studies, site due diligence, etc. We're not an architecture firm.). So we have weekly one-on-ones where we talk through the projects they are each working on, but if I ask "How is the Coupon project going, do you need my help on anything?" and they assure me it's all fine I'd rather believe them than spend the time chasing down the reality by checking emails and the contents of the job file. I've consistently told them that if a difficult conversation has to be had with the client I am here to do it, I will take the hit for them, but I think they're embarrassed to tell me when something is headed sideways.
I'm going to say something that might piss off a lot of folks here... Apologies ahead of time.
But isn't it the PM and PIC's job to communicate with the client? Maybe for smaller projects you have team members communicating with client directly. But on larger projects, communicating with the client, managing client expectation is how PM's and PIC's earn their keeps. The rest of the team (designers, technical architects...) are do-ers who should be insulated from the client's whims.
If my PM spoiled the clients by training them to expect immediate responses, and the clients discover they could also get answers from me, I would usually let the ball drop a few times, ignore the clients a bit to train them to return to their designated "baby sitters", while I go and solve their architectural problems (what they pay ME for).
If the majority of your team is saddled with the burden of keeping your clients feeling important, it sounds like a team structure and staffing problem, not necessarily a communication problem.
The whole "get your people to communicate more" smacks of wishful thinking... It's not like us do-ers can somehow create more time. A well crafted response to clients takes time, a clear response to keep you the boss informed takes time. What are you willing to give up for it? Fewer details? Missing spec sections? Wrong color of the front door?
By 'do-er'? If you mean people doing drawings, specs, coordination, ect? If so, then it's vital that they communicate with the PA's and PM's.
In smaller firms like mine (15 people ) it's not uncommon for EVERYONE to communicate with the entire team to some degree. This includes clients. The less experienced peoples communication with clients and are typically limited to responding to requests for drawings, small changes to the work, ect. The PM and PA are always copied in on these communications. Larger items like schedule, overall design, budget, ect are handled by the PA's and PM's.
This is regardless of the project size ($5million to $200 million in my firm's case)
It seems like that in Donna's OP the team isn't meeting deadlines and responding clients small requests. That's totally within their responsibilities.
In my organization, CHC, I would kind of agree. Rather, the PM would never expect us do-ers to interface with the client like that. I chalk it up to different firm size/structure or projects. There are so many different ways to practice. I was actually thinking of asking Donna for more info about this point, just out of curiosity.
I think our firm is set up this way because we have more experienced people in the office. I've worked a other larger firms where anything and everything had to be sent to the PM and then the PM would send it to the client and consultants.
I agree with your approach Crazy House Cat. But I'm not practicing traditional architecture, so it's a different relationship. We do real estate consulting for nonprofits, so it's feasibility studies, financial analysis, site due diligence, market scans, test fits, etc. Very different timescale and scope.
Regardless of the project type, it's critical to establish the primary contacts from all stakeholders. I realize I sound like chatgtp here, but it's true regardless of scale, type, or complexity. To do otherwise is risky IMO.
We do have a primary contact for clients / design team. This is typically the PM and PA. Those in our firm outside of those roles will be limited to things like sending drawings or documents to clients and consultants at the direction of the PA and PM.
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