For project managers, no amount of hard work, experience, or preparation can eliminate uncertainties when tackling complex projects. Some things are just out of your control. The sooner you realize this, the more effectively you can focus on controllable factors while adopting strategies to deal with uncertainties more smoothly.
Use our seven proven strategies to help yourself and your teams overcome even the most dire-seeming uncertainties with confidence and clear direction.
- Assess Known Uncertainties
While uncertainties aren’t as calculable as risks, anticipating some is still possible. For example, seasonal weather changes may or may not affect your supply chain, but at least they’re a known factor to consider.
List all the uncertainties you’re aware of and assess their likelihood and potential impact through a SWOT analysis, by running Monte Carlo simulations, and so on. Identify uncertainties that score high on impact and probability and develop contingency plans to minimize their effects.
- Account for Variation
Although it might not seem like it, not all uncertainties are emergencies. Low-priority and low-impact uncertainties simply create minor variations in your project timeline that you should account for during the planning stages.
For example, some team members might become sick or be indisposed during a more extended project lifecycle. Factoring in extra time before signing off on its schedule baseline will help absorb such minor uncertainties.
- Simplify Complex Projects
It’s impossible to anticipate every nuance that might go wrong, especially when dealing with large-scale or multiple projects. You can still handle them more successfully indirectly by breaking up complex projects into smaller milestones that are easier to conceptualize and manage.
This is beneficial on multiple levels. It gives your team members a clear sense of purpose and ensures more frequent small wins that keep morale and productivity up. More importantly, it helps address uncertainty and uncover potentially impactful issues earlier, allowing for timely mitigation.
- Promote Open Communication
Managers have a good grasp of general uncertainties that could disrupt a project. However, team members who are “in the trenches” and deal with the day-to-day specifics are better suited for identifying emerging issues that someone with a high-level overview might not have considered.
This is exactly why maintaining open lines of communication with your team members is essential. Champion transparency and encourage an atmosphere where each person feels heard and validated. This makes it more likely that colleagues will voice concerns and act on intuition. In turn, this helps reduce the number of unknown uncertainties and improves response times.
- Prioritize Cybersecurity
Digital threats like data breaches can severely hinder project progress or, in worst-case scenarios, put your organization’s existence in danger. Uncertainties compound further if you have remote employees, as they might access company networks and sensitive resources through unsafe connections prone to monitoring and exploitation by cybercriminals.
VPNs are a straightforward yet effective means of eliminating cybersecurity uncertainties arising from remote work. They encrypt one’s entire connection, protecting communication and sensitive files that remote employees work with from leaks and theft. With numerous VPN apps available on the market, consult your company’s IT team before recommending any specific solution to team members who need to access sensitive files remotely.
- Embrace an Agile Mindset
Planning for uncertainty doesn’t mean you’ll be paralyzed when unexpected issues arise. Rather, accepting that Murphy’s Law is inevitable will help you respond quickly and prevent major project disruptions.
An agile mindset is the most effective solution for overcoming rigid thinking and processes. On the one hand, being agile means viewing changing conditions and priority shifts as unforeseen opportunities. On the other hand, it involves shifting gears toward more frequent, iterative results that may not be perfect but are easier to refine or pivot on if needed.
- Put a Positive Spin on It
Uncertainty is inherently neutral, yet most people – project managers included – view it as something negative and to be avoided. While you can’t control uncertainty, it doesn’t mean you can’t also turn it into an advantage.
Even adopting a neutral mindset can help. Accept uncertainty as another cost of doing business and a means of developing resilience.
No Uncertainty Is Now Scary
Beset with uncertainty, we also thrive creatively. Viewed as a new obstacle to overcome or a tricky puzzle to solve, uncertainty can become a driving force behind positive change.
Tackle it by encouraging experimentation and flexibility, trusting your team’s ability to find the right solutions when facing the unknown. With the seven tips we’ve presented in this article, we hope you’ll be better equipped to transform project uncertainties into opportunities for growth and innovation.
