Time = Money
Wasted Time = Wasted Money
Wasted Money = Loss of Profit
- Poor Planning
A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.
You’ve likely seen this proverb on an office wall or T-shirt. Most people agree with it—but rarely believe they are the ones it applies to. In reality, details often slip through the cracks, and we end up relying on others to bail us out.
In personal life, last-minute requests may be manageable. In a business environment, however, poor planning can have serious consequences. A project manager without strong situational awareness risks wasting not only their own time, but also the team’s.
Seemingly small oversights can create unnecessary pressure on the entire team to compensate for missed planning elements. This often leads to unplanned overtime and weekend work, increasing project costs while negatively impacting profitability and team morale.
- Procrastination
“I’ll get to it tomorrow.”
Procrastination is closely tied to poor planning. A common project management principle is: plan the work, then work the plan.
When a project manager delays tasks that should be completed today, both planning and execution suffer. Work is neither properly prepared nor completed on time, creating avoidable inefficiencies and downstream issues.
- Interruptions
You can’t avoid them.
Interruptions are inevitable, but they come at a cost. Even brief disruptions can break concentration, and it may take 20 minutes or more to fully regain focus.
These interruptions are more than just a nuisance—they are a significant source of lost productivity and errors. While project managers should remain accessible to their teams, that access should be managed to minimize constant disruptions and protect focused work time.
- Failure to Delegate
Don’t DIY (Do It Yourself).
Failure to delegate can overwhelm a project manager with tasks that could be effectively handled by team members. This often results in excessive administrative work that takes time away from higher-value responsibilities.
Delegation serves two key purposes: it reduces workload and allows the project manager to focus on the overall health of the project, and it provides opportunities to mentor and develop team members.
Bottom line: don’t try to do everything yourself.
- Meetings
What are these meetings really accomplishing?
Consider a meeting with eight attendees, each with a fully burdened labor rate of $100 per hour. That meeting costs the organization $800 per hour. The key question is: what value is being delivered?
Were decisions made? Were problems solved? Did the meeting move the project forward?
Now consider the project manager attending multiple unproductive meetings. This represents not only a direct cost, but also lost opportunity—time that could have been spent on meaningful project work.
Unproductive meetings are, in many ways, the ultimate interruption: costly, time-consuming, and often avoidable.
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