Project management, I say is the most difficult profession in the world. Not because it requires special skills, but for the fact that where it is placed in the organisational hierarchy. We all are fulcrum of the balance between the two extremes of any organisation, and keeping this balance is what makes this job super exciting and tough. Most of our day is spent in looking at data, looking at performance, looking at people, looking at bloody everything in the universe except our own good. Out of all this, communication remains the most important paradigm. What we communicate, how we communicate, and how frequent has a big impact. It can be positive, if you know the best practices, and negative if you don’t manage your communication correctly. In project management, there’s always a chaos around: problems, escalations, progress update, timelines, client meetings, etc. It becomes essential to know the best ways of dealing with daunting situations.
The first thing that comes to your mind, when seeing an escalation or an Error email from a client, is to apologise and try to control the emotion and fire. However, in my opinion it is not the best approach, perhaps the worst. We all work in the same system and understand that human involvement in any task warrants errors and misses. Important point to remember here is that how ready are we to acknowledge it, and stop it from reoccurring? So forget about saying ‘sorry’, first things first.
Now that we are not going to say sorry, what should we do? How to handle the situations? And probably use it as a stepping stone to a healthier and stronger client relation. If you have faced such a problem and still not sure of how to handle it, you have landed on the right page. There is a systematic approach to handling such situations. Follow this simple, yet effective way to achieve the desired goal and prove an upper hand over an agitated client. Preparing for the answer is the first step of the approach, followed by brainstorming and writing your eventual reply.
To prepare for the answer do the following:
- Do an RCA(root cause analysis) of the problem highlighted. You should know the main cause; you don’t want to be solving a wrong problem. This will lead you in bigger troubles.
- Understand the involvement of your people in the problem.
- Identify the dependencies – both psychological & mechanical
- Develop a relation between the identified pointers
- Think of probable solutions
And yes I forgot to Mention, before you do these, blast your team for making the error and they should realise that there is no margin for error. Remember, you are the only person who should love or blast them and no one else.
Now that you have a plan in hand and know all about the problem, get to your computer and start typing. When composing the email, structure it in following five parts:
- Introduction
- Description of error
- Sequence of events that led to the eventual miss
- Solution to the problem
- And, your action to stop it from reoccurring
Introduction
If it is your first email to client, always start by introducing yourself to the addressee and accepting the error. The idea is to empathise with client and give him the confidence that you understand the kind of trouble he is in. If it is your regular interaction you can skip introducing yourself and straight go to acknowledgement and empathy part.Example
Hello XXX,I am YYYY and I handle the daily operations of the team in the capacity of
Keep it simple and short, the idea is to make the client comfortable and know that he is talking to someone who is responsible and understands the business.
Description of error
Define exactly what the error is building on what the client has sent, even if it warrants only reiterating what the client has said in the first place. This will give client the understanding that you have understood his concern and have spent time investigating it. Again this will build his trust in your capability has a leader, acknowledging that you are not afraid of speaking the truth and at the same time brave enough to accept the wrong, and bold enough to take strict actions if required. What it does between the lines is also hints at your willingness to correct the problem and take necessary action.Example
Error definition:Some of the features decided for release in the current sprint did not get published on the live website due to which the data of XXXX available on dashboard is jumbled. Also the invoice and payments of the vendors is incorrectly calculated posing a threat of possible monetary loss. Correcting this error will delay the following sprints and live releases.
What follows next is just to build on this sentiment and convince him on the suggestions you give, plus look up to you for all his queries
Sequence of events
Here the trick is to be as objective as possible. Try writing in bullets and not more than one line(preferably smaller) per bullet. You should mention the completion step or critical steps. If these can be defined with time nothing better than that. One most crucial point to remember here is to keep the connection between all the points. As I mentioned, it is a sequence of events so there needs to a relation between the predecessor & successor bullets/eventsExample:
- Sprint list was shared with the development manager on
- Development manger created a priority task list
- ...........
- .........
- Final approval was given after OAT
Facts is what we state here and also mention where and what exact point the error got introduced. If you think the reason or the error is because of an incontrollable factor do mention it as a subset on the bullet where your finding tells it happened. In case your investigation suggests there are multiple instances/points/bullet where this could have happened, you ask for time for further analysis and identify one specific point/node.
Solution to the problem
Here we again go back into client shoes and think creatively/proactively on how this problem can be solved for client? How can we, when correcting the problem, dilute the effect that it may have on client’s position. Always give more than one option as a solution so that client easily pick and chooses the one he finds most important. Once you have his chosen one just go ahead and implement it, furthermore do send a follow up email on the latest status.Example:
We are not doing the following to mitigate the risk and reduce the effective:- XXXXXXX
- YYYYYYYY
- .........
Did you notice that we have given a hint on which option the client should choose, you need to do it in a subtle way not making it evident.
Your action to stop it from reoccurring
This section is just for reassurance and massaging client’s ego. Give them a flavor that they are very important to us, and this problem has created a fire on this side of the engagement. Every word spoken by them is like very jewel for us and we take it all very seriously. Do structure this section into two subsets – 1) immediate action 2) long term assuranceExample:
We have found the exact reason for the miss and have given a very strong feedback to the concerned person. Furthermore, we have attached a mentor with the person to monitor his performance and make corrections where necessary. Additionally, we are introducing a new point in the checklist to ensure that it does not happen again and others also are aware of it.Finally finish it up with a light hearted one-liner to ease of the pressure; rest the rule of ending the email remains same as per my earlier post.
