Week 5: Keep Control
Ensure Your Team and Freelancers Do Great Job, On Schedule
Monica improved her schedule and all the team members confirmed they understand everything they should do.
On Friday she met with the team again. She asked a few questions and the answers thinned her face. It seemed that the project has not progressed at all!
The Challenge: Right Things Done Right On Time
Monica almost yelled at the team: “you all told me that everything is clear and simple, and now it appears you have not done anything!”
Art Director responded: “Yes, but the client have not sent us the brand book on time and later our graphic designer had some personal issues and delivered a bit crappy piece of art...”
Monica was not too happy about that. She reviewed the project plan together with the team, task by task. She quickly understood the key issues and impediments that were blocking the project's way to success.
The Problem: Paranoia of Controlling Project Must Be In Place
When hiring a freelancer or inviting a team member to do a part of your marketing project, there is usually the same concern: whether he will deliver the product of his work on time. Regardless of what is their fruit of labor: design, content, blog post, animation or website, they all are creative souls.
Recently I have talked to many marketing managers about their most painful problems. Quite often I have heard that the most burning issue is the reliability of individual contributors. Some of them are very reliable although deliver fair but not excellent content. Some of them deliver extraordinary, impressive things, but you can’t even hope they will deliver it on time, or they will meet your specification.
Once you know that you cannot fully rely on timeliness of a freelancer, or just started cooperation with a new person in town, it might be good to have a toolset of managerial techniques helping to get what required and get it on time.
Checkpoints!
Make sure that the day of the deadline is not the first time you see what the freelancer’s has done for you. On the first meeting you supposed to agree on some interim reviews.
Explain clearly what you expect on each review: a sketch on paper, final draft. Plan to verify the checkpoint by yourself or delegate it to somebody who you trust will do that as well or even better than you.
Meanings
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