Damage Control when You Miss a Deadline at Work

Now, that critical project at work may not be finished on deadline.

When you're working under a tight deadline, many things can go wrong and throw off your timeline. Computer systems fail. An error gets caught a little too late. Someone on the project team doesn't complete their part of the puzzle on time. A critical team member quits or gets sick. A vendor doesn't come through with required materials or services, or someone in management changes the projects specs at the last minute.

Whether you're a project manager or a member of the team, facing the possibility of a missed deadline is disappointing, stressful and downright scary. Depending on the situation, it can also have serious ramifications for your career or future assignments.

While the outcome may not be pretty no matter what you do next, there are steps you can take to minimize the pain. By controlling expectations, communicating with your boss and others who will be impacted, and avoiding letting your team disintegrate due to finger-pointing and blame-laying, you can control the damage, finish the project, and move on with lessons learned from an experience you'd rather have avoided altogether.

Control expectations ahead of time

Deadlines can be one of those situations where lying, or at least stretching the truth a little, is acceptable. One of the best ways to control fallout from a deadline being missed it to make sure the external community doesn't even know it happened.

Generally, project planning works one of two ways. In the best case scenario, you're setting a deadline based on how long you think it will take to complete all required work. Your project teams maps out each task that will need to be completed and how long each step will take, and then assigns a deadline to the project based on that assessment.

In some cases, a deadline is set by a client or an upcoming event. In these situations, your project team is actually working backwards, trying to figure out how they'll complete each task required within a time frame that will meet the deadline.

So how does this all fit in to using a "little white lie" to control deadline expectations? It's actually pretty simple. Suppose you're planning a new web site or publication. After pulling together the team of writers, designers, and technical staff who will be part of the project, you determine that all required tasks can be completed by July 1^st. That becomes the deadline your project team is working towards.

But that doesn't mean that you have to share that deadline with the outside world. When you're in control of the project's scope and timeline, and your deadline isn't defined by someone else's expectations or an upcoming event, there's no reason you can't publish or promote a deadline of July 5^th, 10^th, or 15^th. Then the external community, whether they are customers or others in your organization, is expecting a finished product much later than your team plans to get it done.

If your deadline is controlled by outside factors, then you need to work in reverse. The "real" deadline is already out there, so the key is to promote an earlier one to your project team. If you've been given a deadline of July 5^th, work towards completing the project by June 30^th, and set deadlines for each task accordingly.

The key to making "deadline fibs" work is to get yourself and your project team in the mindset that the "internal" expectations are real. Don't let yourselves fall into the trap of thinking "oh, we all know we REALLY have until July 10^th, so what's the big deal?" Take setbacks or attitudes that put the internal deadline at risk as serious problems, and treat them as if they were compromising the published one.

If the internal deadline is missed, then you have built yourself a grace period of days or even weeks to correct issues and get things done. When the internal deadline is met, you've bought yourself time to carefully review or test your finished product, and if appropriate you can even wow a client with ahead-of-schedule delivery.

Don't Surprise the Boss

When you're facing a missed deadline, the temptation to avoid telling your boss can be overwhelming.

A thousand scenarios may run through your mind. Maybe the boss has so much on his plate that if you handle the fallout yourselves, he'll never even know. Maybe if you all work round the clock, you'll be able to meet the deadline against all odds. Maybe you can pull your savings, buy a boatload of lottery tickets, win big, and all escape to a tropical island before the deadline hits.

Obviously, banking your hopes on any of the above is risky. The bottom line is that the fallout from missing a deadline will be much worse if it takes your boss by surprise. He'd rather hear it from your team than find out in an irate phone call from a customer or a gleeful hint-drop from the backstabbing go-getter who really wants your job.

When you suspect that a deadline might be missed, inform your boss right away. Before telling him, be prepared to outline the following:

- What caused the issues that are threatening the deadline?

- When can the project be completed under current circumstances?

- What would be needed to remedy the situation and meet the deadline?

- What is the plan for "damage control" in terms of communicating with clients or handling what the finished project was supposed to accomplish in the interim?

The reaction of your boss will depend entirely on his or her personality type, the culture in your organization, the importance of the project and the deadline, and the potential ramifications of the situation. Be prepared for a reaction that may range from anger and accusation to calm supportiveness. Whatever the reaction, you can almost guarantee it will be better than if your boss had heard about the situation from someone other than you or your team. Missing a deadline can impact how your boss perceives your abilities and reliability. But missing a deadline and trying to hide it from him or let him be put on the spot because he didn't know about the problem will only enhance any negative feelings he's going to have.

Who knows? Depending on the circumstances that caused the problems, maybe the fact that you were forthright, acknowledged the problem and your accountability, and had a backup plan outlined when you came to him will offset some of his frustration. It may even impress him. Maybe he's been in your shoes before and can offer suggestions you and your team haven't considered. Maybe he's in a position to provide the additional resources you need to actually make the deadline.

Avoid the Blame Game (At Least for Now)

Maybe the project deadline is at risk because the IT department couldn't figure out why a system they're supposed to be able to troubleshoot isn't working properly. Maybe a researcher misunderstood expectations you thought were perfectly clear and didn't get what was needed to you on time. Maybe a writer flaked out on you and provided content that needs to be completely rewritten. Maybe an outside vendor failed to deliver materials on time. Maybe a normally reliable support staff member had family issues and missed critical work time, setting everyone else back in the process.

Whatever happened, the people on your team who have done their part to keep things running on time are going to be angry, frustrated and disappointed. They're also going to want it made clear where things came undone, so that their own role in the project isn't seen as part of the failure.

That's all understandable and to be expected. But while the project is still underway, none of you have time for pointing fingers or laying blame. It will be critical to set emotions aside and continue working together as team until the project is behind you.

The bitterness, hard feelings and defensive behaviors that will result from complaining about the IT department's failure to fix a broken system, the researcher's inability to understand instructions, the writers' lousy content or the support staff member's flakiness will only set your project back even further. Pull together, support each other in spite of who was at fault, and get the job done. If an outside vendor was to blame for the set-back, screaming at their customer service reps isn't going to change things, and might make them even harder to work with. Put a smile in your voice, catch some flies with honey, and get them to give you what you need to finish the project.

Once you've delivered your finished product, you can backtrack as a team to discuss what wrong and make sure team members' performances are evaluated accordingly. You can document your problems with the vendor and try to get out of your contract with them or get your money back. In short, you can do what needs to be done to make sure you don't face this situation again without putting your project even further at risk.

Communicate Internally and Externally

Not informing clients or others in your organization can be almost as tempting as hiding issues from your boss. But again, remember that communication can keep a molehill from turning into a mountain.

If you are a risk of missing a deadline that will impact customers or others in your organization, they have a right to know and plan accordingly. They'll resent the missed deadline much more if they find out about it at the last minute and aren't able to do damage control or make alternate plans themselves.

In a prior job, I was part of a group responsible for pulling together a large schedule of courses and events that was published online. We made sure the information got on the web at least two weeks before our students could begin registering for courses. This became an expectation in our campus community.

One semester, we were building the schedule using a new computer system. Glitches in the system and the fact that both the team who were building the schedule and our technical support were still learning how to troubleshoot it caused us to be a few days late in getting the schedule live on the web.

Technically, we hadn't missed a deadline, since we knew we would be able to get things together before student registration. But we also knew that the advisors and teachers in our community liked to meet with their students during the period that the schedule was live but registration hadn't yet started to help them with planning. Doing so helped them keep things less chaotic during the actual registration period.

Because of this, we made a decision to share the problems we were having with them so that they could plan accordingly. While they were disappointed, they appreciated the advance notice so that they could adjust their schedules and student appointments ahead of time.

Giving those who are invested in your project the opportunity to manage the impacts of your missed deadline on their operations is fair, and will be build trust much more effectively than leaving them in the dark.

In the Aftermath - Make Use of Lessons Learned

The focus when you're facing a missed deadline has to be getting the job done, damage control and communication. But once you and your team are out of the frying pan, taking time to reflect on what happened and what you learned from the experience is critical. Evaluating what happened and how you could have done things differently is the best way to avoid the same problem in the future.