From the perspective of a Director on Solution Acceleration, I can see that there were many misteakes made out of lack of experience and tights deadlines. That's why I keep telling to my teams that it all comes with time but you need to try again and again, improving at every iteration. Early in my career, I micromanaged delivery details instead of empowering my PMs. That mistake taught me that trust and autonomy drive stronger outcomes than constant oversight. It's like fostering. You open an opporunity to grasp and a person uses it as a ladder to grow. Additionally, I tell my project managers to stop treating status reports as the main measure of success as soon as real delivery health is seen in stakeholder confidence and team compaund velocity. When delivery goes off track, my first move is to re-align scope and expectations with stakeholders before diving into task-level fixes. Like a backup to ensure we are aligned in our vectors. It prevents wasted effort and restores clarity.
Executive & Leadership Coach | Team Facilitator | Speaker at Dana Zellers
Answered 2 months ago
I'm Dana Zellers, Executive & Leadership Coach | Team Facilitator | Speaker. I spent 25+ years leading digital delivery and operations teams at Uber, Twitter, GS&P, and Publicis before moving into executive coaching. Today, I work with PMO and delivery leaders who are under pressure to deliver more with fewer resources and less margin for error. The leadership mistake I made that reshaped how I run PM teams: Earlier in my leadership career, I took too much responsibility onto myself. I believed strong leadership meant absorbing the pressure and shielding the team. What I see now, both in hindsight and with clients, is that this limits shared ownership. The shift is having the entire team contribute to defining scope, surfacing risks early, and naming issues out loud instead of carrying them alone. One practice I would tell project managers to stop following: Stop accepting scope and schedule at face value. Many PMs feel pressure to say yes and figure it out later, but unchallenged assumptions almost always resurface as missed deadlines or strained relationships. The strongest PMs dig in early, pressure-test the plan, and clarify what is truly required versus what is assumed. The first intervention I make when delivery goes off track: I immediately realign everyone on scope, current status, and explicit trade-offs. We clarify where time can be extended, where scope can be reduced, and where expectations must shift. Most delivery issues are not execution failures, they are alignment failures that were never corrected. I'm happy to expand on this or provide additional context. I'm available for follow-up questions or an interview, and can connect on your timeline. Please let me know if this is placed so I can share it with my audience. Dana Zellers Executive & Leadership Coach | Team Facilitator | Speaker https://www.danazellers.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/dana-zellers/
Founder & Principal at Delivery Is the Strategy™ (a NexTech Software Inc. practice)
Answered 2 months ago
Question 1: The leadership mistake I made that reshaped how I run PM teams I spent a decade optimizing for green status reports. Every dashboard showed on-track, every milestone hit, every vendor delivering. Then the CFO asked me to prove the $4.2M in promised savings from our ERP program. We had delivered the software. We had not delivered the outcome. I now run post-implementation value audits at 90 days, 180 days, and 12 months. If we cannot show the money moved, we did not finish the work. Question 2: One practice I would tell all the project managers I manage to stop following Stop sending status updates that read like diary entries. Your executives do not care that the infrastructure team completed 47 tickets last week. They care that the payment gateway is still offline and costing the business $18K per day in abandoned checkouts. Every status report should answer one question: what decision do you need from me right now to unblock revenue? If the answer is nothing, do not send the report. Question 3: The first intervention I make when delivery goes off track I ask for the original business case and give teams 24 hours to produce it. In my experience running recovery programs across financial services and logistics, fewer than half can find it. The rest have been managing to a Gantt chart for nine months with no memory of whether they were chasing cost reduction, revenue growth, or operational efficiency. You cannot recover a program when nobody remembers what winning looks like. Cosmina Buiga, Founder of Delivery Is the Strategytm and delivery executive with 25 years managing transformation programs. We provide execution control for mid-market digital transformations
1) Leadership mistake that reshaped how I run PM teams Treating everyone the same doesn't work; sometimes you need a tailored approach. People have different strengths, weaknesses, and ways of approaching problems, and failing to account for that led to frustration and underperformance. I learned to adapt my approach to each person—pushing some, giving others space, and tailoring guidance where it's needed. Leadership isn't about being fair on paper; it's about getting the best out of each individual. 2) One practice I'd tell PMs to stop following Dwelling too much on your decisions. The need for perfect clarity often arises for PMs early in their careers, but that's something that doesn't exist. Waiting for it slows progress, creates bottlenecks, and adds stress to the team. PMs should make the best call they can with the information they have, act, and then adjust as they go. Momentum itself creates clarity. Once you move, patterns emerge, and decisions become easier. This doesn't mean acting recklessly; it means being pragmatic and decisive. 3) First intervention when delivery goes off track Most delivery issues can be resolved through realignment. Deadlines give me the same feeling as going to the dentist; you know it's coming, and there's not much you can do to avoid it. Sometimes deadlines need adjusting, sometimes resources need shifting, and sometimes communication needs a reset. Most delivery problems aren't about effort; they're about focus, alignment, and realistic pacing. Bojan Rendulic, VP of Marketing at Productive.io I know you said 2-3 sentences max, but I think making them shorter would lose context. Of course, if needed, I can make the replies shorter.
I am Michael Akiva, Managing Partner of Jacoby & Meyers, a personal injury law firm serving clients across California for more than 50 years. As the firm expanded, I learned that growth exposes inconsistencies unless standards are clearly defined and reinforced. When you are serving clients across more than 50 areas in California, differences in communication style or documentation standards can quietly create uneven delivery. I learned that alignment across intake, records, medical coordination, and litigation teams has to be intentional. My initial intervention is a cross-office review of how the workflow is being carried out. If one location is moving cases efficiently and another is not, the issue is usually procedural, not talent based. Standardizing expectations at each stage restores consistency faster than escalating pressure.
Business Coach. Project Strategist. Wine Consultant at The Tailored PM
Answered 2 months ago
1. The leadership mistake I made that reshaped how I run PM teams - The leadership mistake I made that reshaped how I run PM teams was that I stopped treating everyone the same and this might be a little taboo, but once I got my PMP i threw some of that knowledge out the window. The PMP exam teaches us to be of stewardship. We don't make decisions we just guide. Not in the real PM world. a lot of companies are hiring us to actually organize, guide AND make the decisions. 2. One practice I would tell all the project managers I manage to stop following - One practice I would tell all PM's I manage is stop following is thinking you need your PMP to be successful. I was a PM for over 6 yrs before I got my PMP and I got it thinking I needed it to land a good job. WRONG! The PMP in my honest opinion looks good on paper, you get the real work and knowledge in the field. Get the certification if you truly want it for yourself ONLY, not for a company who you hope picks you. The right company will choose you with or without three letters behind your name. 3. The first intervention I make when delivery goes off track - The first intervention I make is immediately grabbing my mitigate guide I make for every project. If scoop creep is happing I'm turning to page 2 and if a shareholder has gone ghost especially if they have al ot of stake in the project I'm turning to page 6. Alywas have a plan for when things go off track.
When you run a fintech crypto platform where money moves 24/7 across 150+ countries, you learn quickly that plans don't fail because people aren't working hard. They fail because work crosses time zones, touches country-specific compliance rules, and gets handed between teams without clear ownership. I made the mistake early on of treating delivery like a straight line. It isn't. When delivery goes off track now, the first thing I intervene on is ownership around critical flows like payouts or compliance checks, and I tell PMs to stop planning as if every task moves in a straight line, because global delivery needs buffers and clear responsibility far more than perfect timelines.
1 / Early in my leadership journey, I tried to hold every thread myself -- the timelines, the client comms, the team emotions. Letting go and trusting my PM leads reshaped everything; now I build frameworks, not bottlenecks. 2 / Chasing perfection in every project detail -- it's a habit that quietly kills momentum. Progress with presence and clarity beats textbook polish every time. 3 / First thing I intervene with is energy -- I pause the scramble and call a human check-in. A misaligned delivery usually hides a misalignment in people, pace, or purpose. -- Julia Pukhalskaia, Founder & CEO, Mermaid Way
1 / Early on, I assumed hustling harder could fix timeline slips. I'd tighten deadlines, add tasks, push people -- and it backfired. Now, if delivery slips, I zoom out first: Are priorities clear? Do people really feel ownership? Speed happens when vision is shared. 2 / I tell new PMs to stop "staying late to save the day." If your process depends on heroics, it's broken. I'd rather they flag issues early than clean up quietly -- it builds trust and resilience. 3 / First thing I ask is: what data are we not seeing? Nine times out of ten, delays stem from invisible bottlenecks -- a stuck approval, a misread milestone. Not until we see the real picture can we shift course. -- Damien Zouaoui, Co-Founder, Oakwell Beer Spa
(1) Early in my leadership journey, I tried to shield my team from senior stakeholder pressure instead of empowering them to face it with the right tools. I learned that transparency, coupled with coaching, builds resilience and trust faster than protection does. (2) I ask PMs to stop measuring success only by task completion. Delivery must be tied to user impact -- checking off items that don't solve the customer's problem is just motion, not progress. (3) The first thing I do is reframe the scope into outcomes: what are we actually trying to solve, and what's essential to get there? Once that's clear, we bring everyone together -- PMs, ops, dev -- to reset priorities and renegotiate deliverables aligned to real value. -- Hans Graubard, Co-Founder & COO, Happy V
I'm Tom Terronez with Medix Dental IT. I used to be bad at communicating project changes, and my team would get confused and frustrated. Now, I schedule a quick check-in anytime a project scope might shift. It keeps everyone on the same page and saves us from costly mistakes. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to my personal email
Here's my advice for project managers: stop rushing to build things. At AthenaHQ, we learned that if we took time upfront to agree on what we were actually trying to achieve, projects moved faster. When everyone knows what success looks like, you avoid spending weeks fixing stuff that went in the wrong direction. That early planning saves you from doing the work twice. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to my personal email
President & CEO at Performance One Data Solutions (Division of Ross Group Inc)
Answered 2 months ago
Stop holding status meetings to keep people accountable. It doesn't work. We put everything on an open dashboard instead. That way, the whole team can see who's stuck and who's getting things done. For remote groups, this transparency keeps projects moving and prevents those frantic last-minute emails. Honestly, it's the best way I've found. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to my personal email
My biggest mistake at CLDY.com was holding onto critical tasks myself. I thought I was helping, but I was just creating bottlenecks. Now I hand that work to my leads and am clear about what I need delivered. When a project starts going off the rails, my first move is to check for communication gaps and clarify who owns what. That step gets everyone back on track almost every time. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to my personal email
When things start sliding off the rails, I get the team together fast. Sometimes just listening uncovers the real roadblock. At The Lakes Treatment Center, I started asking, "What's one thing holding us back?" and you'd be surprised how quickly that clears the air. In healthcare, the constant urgency makes you miss things. So I always call for those quick timeouts. They fix the confusion and get everyone pointed in the same direction again. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to my personal email
I tell my project managers to stop waiting for status meetings to find problems. By then, it's too late. What works for us is quick daily stand-ups and peer reviews. This lets us catch things early on our digital projects. If delivery falls behind, I map out blockers directly with the team and reshuffle tasks right away. This gets things back on track without adding pressure for the team. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to my personal email
I used to make a big mistake by not listening to my project managers. I thought my top-down processes were enough, but I was ignoring the people dealing with the actual daily problems. Now, I make a point to ask them what's broken and we change things based on their answers. The best fixes always come from the people closest to the work. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to my personal email
I learned at Bell Fire and Security that trying to control every detail just slows everything down. When I stopped micromanaging and just told my team leads what needed to happen, projects moved faster. Now if something goes sideways, I talk to the people doing the work first. They see problems long before any report does. My advice is to ditch the rigid checklists and actually listen to your team. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to my personal email
I'm Kevin O'Shea, Chief Operating Officer at Triple F Elite Sports Training in Knoxville. I spent 8 years directing clinical operations for addiction treatment before moving into sports performance, and I've learned that team delivery principles are universal--whether you're managing client outcomes in behavioral health or athletic development programs. **The leadership mistake I made that reshaped how I run teams:** I used to think standardized processes meant everyone followed the exact same playbook. When I was Director of Clinical Outreach in Miami, I enforced rigid intake protocols that frustrated my best counselors who knew their clients needed flexibility. I lost two talented team members before realizing that clarity on outcomes matters more than uniformity in execution--now I define the destination clearly but let experienced people choose their route. **One practice I would tell managers to stop following:** Stop requiring your team to document every single decision for CYA purposes. In my behavioral health role, I watched clinicians spend 40% of their week on defensive documentation instead of actual client work. When I shifted to "document what matters for continuity, skip the rest," our client satisfaction jumped and team burnout dropped noticeably. **The first intervention when delivery goes off track:** I immediately get the team in a room to kill the email chain and talk face-to-face. When our youth training program launch was two weeks behind schedule last year, I stopped the Slack spiral and gathered everyone for 90 minutes--we identified three overlapping responsibilities creating bottlenecks and reassigned them on the spot. We recovered the timeline within a week.
When a project starts going sideways, I get everyone in a room and ask what's actually screwing things up, no blame allowed. You always find out stuff the spreadsheet never tells you. Once we know the real problem, we can fix it. I suggest making these talks a regular thing. You get answers quicker and everyone feels less stuck. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to my personal email