Meetings can be the biggest waste of time ever conceived. They can rob a project team of doing productive work, waste money and strip the team of morale. I’ve seen some exceptionally bad meetings in my time, in fact this article is inspired by one I went to recently that was perhaps the most soul destroying, pointless, badly managed meeting I have ever had the displeasure of being invited to. But I’ve also seen really good meetings. What is the difference?

Well, a good meeting has a purpose, people come prepared, stay focussed, stick to an agenda and get real value from the meeting. It serves as a forum for resolving issues, making decisions and team building.

A bad one is where people turn up unprepared, people are there who don’t need to be there, several people start having a conversation that they could have before or after the meeting, there is no accountability and no real reason for the meeting to happen. The room is filled with bored, disinterested people wishing they were somewhere else. Do any of these sound familiar? If so, then you are probably in a bad meeting. Think for a moment about the people in the room and their charge out rates. Add these up and you may be surprised about how much that meeting is costing to run – are you getting value for money?

First, before holding any meeting can you justify getting these people together? Is a meeting the best way to get the results you want? Do you know the result you want? There are plenty of other ways to discuss issues, have debates, exchange ideas, catch up on personal lives and waste precious time – meeting don’t have to be your first port of call.

So, once you have decided that there is merit in holding a meeting, set some ground rules:

1. Set a date and time,

2. Send out an agenda - and stick to it

3. Leave non agenda items for last or for outside of the meeting.

4. Start on time - if you don’t you let people know it’s ok to turn up late and they will always turn up late. If people do turn up late note this on the minutes, they won’t do it too often.

5. Finish on time - if you don’t, people won’t turn up to future meetings

6. Only have the people who need to be there for the time they need to be there – let them go when their contribution is no longer needed

7. Don’t go longer than an hour – people can’t concentrate that long, even after 30 minutes you should consider supplying food and drinks.

8. Don’t let people talk over each other.

9. If irrelevant discussion starts politely suggest people stay behind after the meeting to discuss or catch up at some other time.

10. Have someone take good concise minutes and circulate them after.

Try these rules and you may end up actually getting value from a meeting. I would love to hear from you about your best and worst meeting experiences and tips.

It’s hard enough making sure you know whether you are a project manager, project administrator, project coordinator, project facilitator, or project expeditor. But what exactly is the difference between a project manager and a contract manager? I’ve met plenty of people who tell me they are project managers or work for consultancies providing project management services but in my opinion they are not project managers they are in fact contract managers and their organisations are providing contract management services.

So what is the difference and does it matter?

The easiest way to explain what a project manager is, is simply to replace the work ‘Project’ with ‘General’ – so a project manager is in fact the ‘general manager’ for a project. We all know what general managers do. They look after financing, communications, staff, marketing, risks, strategy and every other aspect of a business. This is what someone with the title of project manager is supposed to be as well – the complete manager of a project. Anything less and you are not a project manager, choose one of the other titles.

I often think of an analogy using cars to describe the difference – contract managers are Land Rover Defenders – solid, dependable and suited to particular environments while project managers are more like a Range Rover – all the extras.

So then what is a contract manager? Well a contract manager steps in to develop, negotiate and execute a contract for project services. It can be a very large and complex contract but it only requires knowledge of the terms of the contract and making sure they are followed. Typically contract mangers aren’t great people managers, they aren’t exceptional leaders, and they aren’t exceptional communicators – all the things that a project manager must be. Contract managers tend to be technical experts who have assumed a management role. Their focus is on the delivery of products or services.

So you’ve been asked to provide an estimate for project cost or time. What do you do?

You could simply think of a random number, multiply it by the number of freckles on the back of your hand, divide it by the number of bites it took to eat your lunch today and then subtract a 5 digit prime number. That’s an estimate isn’t it? Yes it is and I have seen methods not too dissimilar to this actually being used to justify investing in a project or a business case. Sometimes the process of providing an estimate for time or cost is simply a political exercise to provide people with what they want to hear.

So is there a better way? Of course there is.

The first step is to acknowledge that an estimate is exactly that – an estimate. It isn’t a quote or a contractually fixed amount. It’s an attempt to forecast what the likely time or cost will be using all the information you have at hand. Obviously the more information and the more accurate the information the better the estimate will be.

There are two elements to estimating – clarity and accuracy. When preparing your estimates there are a range of tools and techniques you can use, each with its own level of clarity and accuracy. Choose the most appropriate tools and techniques to get the best estimate possible.

Clarity relates to how transparent the information you used to make your estimate is. Have you acknowledged the sources and methods used to make the estimate? You can have an estimate that acknowledges a wide range of pricing or time but is transparent in its sources and assumptions made. You should always acknowledge where your information came from and how certain you are about its validity. This lets people know how to treat your estimate.

Nothing matters more in project management than having great people skills.

This statement may come as a surprise to those of you working hard on your technical skills of time, cost, quality and risk in project management. You can estimate resources, cost and time to within a 0.5% margin of error; you can use software to produce report after report and chart after chart; you know the technical specifications of your product better than you know the back of your hand; and you love numbers, spreadsheets and Gantt charts. Aren’t these the most important project management skills to have? Sure, they are important and you need them to be successful, but it's the people skills that are most useful to you as a project manager.

Let me start by recounting an experience I had while managing a large construction project. I was working on this project and was proud of the fact that early on it was already ahead of time, ahead of budget and delivering greater quality than expected. I was shocked to be taken aside by the project sponsor and be told that my project was in no uncertain terms considered a failure! How could this be, when on paper the project was doing well? She explained to me that stakeholders just didn’t know me nor did they trust me. The first problem existed because I didn’t build relationships well and the second because I didn’t communicate effectively.

I am constantly surprised by the large number of people acting as project managers who tell me that they have all the responsibility for the success of a project but little or no authority on the project.

This means that they have the responsibility to deliver the project on time, on budget and to the required specifications, but they do not have the authority to get the resources they want, manage the budget or to make decisions affecting critical parts of the project. If you have more responsibility than authority then you are not a project manager. You are a project administrator, expeditor, facilitator, coordinator or, more often than not, simply a scapegoat in waiting.

Would you accept the job of General Manager for Microsoft and then be told that you had no authority to hire and fire, to track and change budgets, to develop and market products and to influence the organisation strategically? When the Board of Directors will be measuring you against all these factors and if the company doesn’t do well, you'll be fired? No you wouldn’t, so why accept the same in project management? After all, a project manager is the general manager of a project.

Allowing this situation is setting you up for stress, failure and an early exit from the profession of project management. If the level of responsibility you have is greater than the level of authority that you have then it’s like heading to the guillotine with no way to stop the blade from dropping -- don’t do it!

I sense the frustration these people have and I can see the look of surprise and amazement when I tell them that a true project manager has equally high levels of authority and responsibility.

So how do you get equally high levels of responsibility and authority?

When you are a project manager, you have responsibility for the success of the project. Organisations depend on the success of projects to deliver their strategic goals and ensure their continued viability, profitably and reputation. What you do as a project manager will directly affect you, your employer and your client. So, with all this responsibility, is being good enough, good enough?

If you are a project manager that is good enough to do the job you will have enough experience and enough skills to do the job and probably, more often than not, you will be ‘successful’. This means that they project gets delivered with perhaps a few delays and maybe just a little over budget but overall the client and your employer is happy with your performance.

But is this good enough?

No, it's not.

Good enough is the minimal acceptable level of performance required to ensure that chance favours the outcome of any project. Good enough means that all other things being equal you will probably, deliver something acceptable.

Would you accept good enough from an airline pilot, a structural engineer or your doctor? If so, then I invite you to fly in a plane with a pilot who is just good enough, or to go up the elevator in a 70 storey building designed by a structural engineer who is just good enough or to trust the opinion that its nothing to worry about from a doctor who is just good enough. Sure, being good enough will be ok most of the time, but it won’t be useful to you when fate or fortune presents the opportunities for great misfortune or great opportunity. Those who are good enough will fall in the face of adversity and those who are good enough will miss the opportunity to excel when it presents itself.

You have an obligation to yourself, your employer and your client to ensure that there is no other option except excellence in managing projects.