Procrastination: Killing Projects…
May 14th, 2009One of the biggest criticisms of Root Cause Failure Analysis interventions is the number of projects that are never completed, a lot of which are ultimately abandoned.
What a waste! All that effort put into solving a problem, and the solution doesn’t get implemented.
This phenomenon is evident in a lot of companies, and is a difficult one to deal with. How do we get people to complete projects?
Some insight into the way people handle deadlines is given by Dan Ariely in his book, ‘Predictably Irrational’. He describes an experiment he did with university students to submit three project papers.
The first group were told that they could submit the three papers any time up to the end of the semester.
The second group were asked to give dates on which they would submit the papers. Virtually all the students spaced the timing of their submissions across the whole semester.
The third class received what might be called dictatorial treatment - they were given three deadline dates, and were left no room for choice or flexibility.
You’ve probably guessed it - the third group got the best grades for their projects. Interestingly enough, the second group got better grades than the first group.
Procrastination is an inherent problem with a lot of us, and this is not only evident with Dan Ariely’s students but with people tasked to complete projects in organisations. But the results of this experiment show that interim deadlines help to beat procrastination.
Nobody likes to be dictatorial about milestone dates - it can result in teams not actually setting milestones for themselves, but rather letting these be set for them.
But the study shows that if we can get teams to commit themselves to milestones or interim dates, there is a better chance of them completing the project that they embarked on. And the Root Cause Failure Analysis initiative will yield the results you wanted.
