With failure inevitably plaguing many of their projects, CEOs must be wary of what might go wrong. Their project managers are the key to success at the outset. They must clearly articulate their needs upfront. CEOs must avoid being influenced by architects and designers before clarifying budgets. They must delegate to deputies without keeping a hidden agenda and ensure that projects are adequately and reliably financed, allowing time for successful completion, including unforeseen emergencies. They must manage all project relationships, enabling the project manager to overcome real or potential disasters.

As a CEO, with inevitably several painful experiences behind you, you are probably only too aware of the statistic that up to 70% of projects fail - they are not completed on time, or on budget, or to the expected quality standards - or all of the above. Some of your projects did not keep within the budget even if they were finished on time, and in many cases, your projects overran the time allocated to the work, as well as costing more in the end. They might also have been disappointing in terms of quality. But if, from the outset, a larger budget had been allocated, and more time had been provided for these projects - they would probably still have failed anyway. Why? There was a lot more happening behind the scenes, and it may have been that things went wrong right from the beginning. There was a planning problem, a design and costing problem and then the relationships between the key players on the project started to fall apart.

There are at least 12 main reasons why things go wrong in projects and approximately in this order, too, you will see that the performance and ability of the Project Manager is the key to the success of any project, especially his ability to manage you, the CEO, and the other stakeholders.

These reasons for failure are basically about project definition, financing and scheduling, key stakeholder expectations, and relationships. It is also about the role of the Project Manager himself (usually it is a gentleman but could easily be a lady, yet for convenience we use the male terminology). In the case of the Project Manager, he must be prepared to not just manage resources but the people too. The people working for him are usually not an issue but, as indicated above, it is the people above him that he has to manage - often without them feeling managed! As a CEO, you want to feel in control, but the basic message this article conveys is that it pays to listen to your Project Manager.

Global CEO Magazine, Potential Disasters, Project Management, Financial Contingencies, Economic Meltdown, Architectural Issues, Potential Risk, Quality Specifications, Decision Making, Refurbishment Projects, Regulatory Requirements.