Home » Employee Training » How to Avoid Project Management Trainings Mistakes
Mistakes in the workplace are common, but it’s our ability to counteract and safeguard against them that’s most important.
Mistakes are inevitable, but you can reduce their impact by being prepared to tackle them. Organizations who can recoup from mistakes will have learned from their failures, and will come out stronger on the other side.
Like the old adage goes, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Unfortunately, with project management, even the smallest mistakes can have huge implications later down the line. This can send companies over budget, deriving from the unique complexities of each project.
To avoid complications, effective project management trainings are a great way to deliver successful outcomes. Unfortunately, there are countless mistakes during training processes which can contribute to project failure.
These are best avoided, so by bringing these common project management trainings failures to your attention, you can mitigate risks which can detract from continuous development.
Learn from these mistakes and you’ll experience some great benefits:
Generic Training
There are many different generations in today’s workforce, which comprise a diverse mix of aspirations. Though there are similarities between staff, there are also considerable differences which should be acknowledged if you want to maximize your project management trainings.
Adopting a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work in 2018, because there are so many different ways to learn. As a society, we’re spoiled for choice with so many learning methods, but you can take advantage of this by tailoring your training procedures based on how your team likes to receive information.
For example, your younger workforce will prefer eLearning, but this won’t necessarily work with those who are a bit more traditional. Consider interactive resources, and never neglect the importance of face-to-face learning. Ultimately, a combination of various methods is the best way to consolidate information, which can be reinforced when applied to real-life scenarios.
For more complex topics, consider engaging your staff with instructor-led training. Learning from a professional will have a profound impact on your audience, and you can perhaps even use online tests to determine how successful your approach has been.
Failing to Appreciate the Project Management Trainings Budget
Your project management trainings budget is likely to be stringent, where learning and development is commonly the first area to feel the pinch. This is somewhat counterproductive, especially when you consider the intrinsic link between training and performance.
It’s important you understand the importance of your training budget, and always promote the benefits to high-ranking staff. When your project management trainings budget is taken for granted, you’ll miss it when it’s gone. Your bosses need to realize cutting training can cause performance to suffer, and to demonstrate this you should implement performance measures.
By evaluating different metrics, you can use real statistics to prove how training is improving employee engagement, a great way to retain your budget and continue to receive organizational benefits.
A Lack of Prioritization
Project management trainings are often undervalued, when in reality they’re among the most important initiatives going. Continuing from the previous point, you wouldn’t know this was this case, where leaders fail to acknowledge the importance of development.
It’s easy for change initiatives to be put on the back burner in favor of more ‘concrete’ priorities, but just because project management trainings aren’t clear cut doesn’t mean they’re not valuable.
The result of a lack of prioritization? Project management trainings stalled for months, or even years in extreme cases! Though you might feel you’re burdening your team with additional training, it’s important to appreciate things from a long-term perspective.
Though you’ll add to your employees daily duties, which will perhaps suffer as a result, the changes they’ll embrace will help them work smarter, and potentially transform your organization. A smart organization is one who works in alignment with overarching objectives, and can directly influence your company’s bottom line.
Ignoring Current Culture
If you want to transform your culture for the better, it’s essential you understand your current status. By appreciating your baseline, knowing where you are and where you’re trying to get, you can align your project management trainings accordingly.
Use focus groups, meetings, and surveys to understand your employee’s thoughts on project management, and how they think it could be improved. This is a great way to get staff on board with developments, while obtaining valuable information you can use to make your project management trainings better.
With the data you obtain, you can devise a strategic, well-informed training plan, which should always be flexibly adjustable based on changing circumstances.
Remember, your project management trainings should always target common issues, so when staff identify weaknesses and your analysis indicates critical development areas, you should prioritize tackling knowledge gaps which equip your team with the project management skills they need.
Project management is a broad scope, but by avoiding these common mistakes you’ll create a competent workforce who can deal with the daily issues they’ll encounter.
