Projects can go sideways.
The gas line turns out to be a full block away just as the team is ready to tie into it. The existing building deviates much further from the plumb line than expected. The inverter is backordered three months.
Your PM knows immediately that this is a big deal.
The schedule is at risk. The budget is affected. There could be expensive consequences, claims, or damages. The team needs to respond.
And this is where an interesting leadership challenge can emerge.
When the plan is no longer useful
The PM may start by trying to understand exactly what went wrong. Who made the mistake? How far have we deviated from the plan? What part of the original plan can still be used? Who is responsible?
Those are reasonable questions. The problem is when answering them becomes a prerequisite for figuring out what to do next.
The PM can become focused on auditing the situation, untangling competing claims, and trying to restore the original plan. Meanwhile, the project is still losing time, the team becomes defensive rather than creative, and everyone waits for someone to determine the right answer.
Eventually, the responsibility for finding reasonable next steps gets elevated. Executives start making calls, leveraging their networks, and helping the project team find a way forward.
Even once the project gets moving again, the impact can continue. Executive time is still needed to reset communication, relationships, and decision-making.
The original problem may have been a gas line, a building condition, or an equipment order, but it became a bigger operational problem.
What if the first question was different?
When a project goes sideways, I don’t think the first question needs to be: How do we get back to the plan?
But rather: What do we need to do next to regain momentum?
That’s a different way of thinking.
It doesn’t mean ignoring what happened. It doesn’t mean abandoning accountability or accepting unnecessary costs. It means recognizing that the original plan may no longer be the most useful tool for navigating the new situation.
Find the next few useful steps, not a whole plan
Bring the right people into the problem.
Create some fresh options.
Then go back and understand what happened.
Recover first. Reflect later.
Why is this hard to do?
Many project managers have tied their value to both their ability to create and refine the plan, and their self-sufficiency.
They know how to build budgets. They understand critical paths. They can develop detailed schedules and coordinate a complicated collection of moving parts. Their ability to make a project more predictable is a significant part of what makes them good at their jobs.
So when the plan suddenly becomes unreliable, letting go of it can feel like giving up what makes them valuable.
Taking a few steps in a generally right direction can feel like walking an unmarked trail when you’ve been successful by developing detailed road maps.
Meanwhile, the PM also believes that the more they can handle on their own, the more valuable they are. They’ve taken to heart that they should always present solutions rather than problems. They may feel that elevating an issue before they have a complete answer is a failure to lead, which also feels risky.
It’s counter-intuitive, and daunting, to say “I don’t have the whole answer yet. Here’s what I know, here’s what has changed, and here’s what I think we should do next.”
The industry has changed
The current work environment is making it harder for PMs to be adaptable, than for previous generations.
Today’s project teams have access to infinitely more information, more predictive technology, and more sophisticated planning tools. Almost any piece of information can be found quickly, and schedules can be mapped and visualized with remarkable specificity.
Those tools are valuable.
But they also create an expectation that every detail of a project can be known and planned in advance.
Earlier generations of PMs often worked with more built-in buffer in their planning tools.
With fewer predictive technologies, project teams were accustomed to encountering, and collaborating through, a wider range of unforeseen conditions. And those experiences were relatively contained – communication could be managed, information could be checked, and wild ideas could safely be entertained.
Today, news about a major problem can spread quickly. Photos, documents, statements can all widely circulate and be taken out of context and sensationalized – while a PM is still trying to understand what’s actually happening on the ground.
Something going sideways today involves a lot of public perception and judgement – both that a problem happened, and that a solution hasn’t immediately materialised. This contributes to a chaotic environment and a PM questioning themselves about what to do.
This is a leadership capability
The PM who can adapt when the plan stops working isn’t necessarily the person who knows the most.
It’s the person who can stay engaged with reality.
They can shift from protecting the original plan to creating options for the situation that exists. They can bring people into the problem rather than immediately looking for someone to blame. They can use their own network and other people’s networks. They can tolerate incomplete information long enough to take the next useful step.
And they can regain momentum.
That matters because we aren’t trying to grow PMs who can eliminate every unexpected problem.
Construction doesn’t work that way.
The goal is to build project leaders who can absorb disruption without automatically sending it upward.
They’ve had the training, and the mentoring. Now they need the third piece – real time, real scenario coaching.
What would change for your operation?
Imagine a project hits a major unexpected problem.
Instead of hearing:
“We have a problem. What do you want me to do?”
you hear:
“Here’s what changed. Here’s what we’re doing now. Here are two options we’re exploring. I’ll come back to you when I need a decision.”
The problem hasn’t disappeared.
The PM hasn’t magically found the perfect answer.
But the project is moving again, and the VP Operations isn’t carrying the full lift of creating the new plan and resetting the momentum.
That’s leadership capacity.
And it’s something you can develop.
If there’s someone on your team you’re thinking about right now, let’s spend 30 minutes looking at where they’re getting stuck, what might be underneath it, and what a development plan for their adaptability skills could be.
Check out this short video about a client who got stuck when things went sideways.
