New Project Timeline

Delivered on 11/10/17 in Jensen Beach, FL

Good morning, team. I set up this meeting to discuss some upcoming changes to the timeline and expectations of the project you’re working on. Here’s the gist of it: we’re in a time crunch and we’ll have to finish the project much sooner than we thought. But I want to explain the reason for this change, and you’ll see it’ll actually be for the better.

When you were hired back in April as consultants, you’ll remember that we have 60 different clinics that needed to be audited and addressed. From the very beginning, we hired you to take one or two clinics at time, perform the audit and recommendations in 10 weeks, and move on to the next clinics. The hospital leadership expected this project would last 12 months.

As you know, the scope of the project has evolved a few times since April. You’ve taken on more tasks and adjusted the rollout plan, and I appreciate your flexibility in adapting to the leadership’s changing needs. You’ve all done a great job adapting to changes up to this point.

Based on our initial projections, you would finish all 60 clinics by the end of April 2018, which happens to be when your contract ends. But with being short staffed and with an increase in the scope of the project, we wouldn’t be able to finish until June of 2018.

What you may not know is that we recently discovered a mistake in the original plan. The consulting company miscalculated the expenses of the project, so we’re losing money faster that we thought we would. As a result, we’re projected to run out of money in February of 2018.

This means we have to change our game plan. We have 4 months left to go before our money runs out and 8 months worth of work. So starting today, there are few things I’d like you to do.

Change #1. Cut down on expenses by flying less often. You can plan your meetings ahead of time so you don’t have to fly to Dallas every week. This will help our budget a lot. I see some of you are smiling because you get to work from home for a few weeks. So this change is good news.

Change #2. We are trimming down the fat. Instead of meeting with each nurse and doctor individually, from now on we’ll host one lunch where they can bring their feedback to us. Instead of making changes to the software at this stage, we will let the operational leaders make those changes after we’re done with the project. That means less work per clinic.

Change #3. You have to protect the new scope of the project. Before, we had more flexibility to add on new tasks, make customizations for each clinic, and solve problems only tangentially related to our core goal. We can’t afford to do that in the next 4 months. You know the clinics are going to ask you to do more than you can, and it’s your responsibility to tactfully deny that.

Change #4. Instead of starting one clinic after another finishes, we’ll have to stagger them. This is the biggest change. Don’t wait to neatly wrap up one clinic before moving on to the next. Once you’ve done most of the legwork for your current clinic, start the kickoff for the next one on the list. This may seem like you’re doubling down on work, but that’s not the case. Since we’re trimming the fat, this staggered model is definitely manageable for the next few months.

We believe that with these 4 changes we can complete the whole project by February without overloading you with work. We just have to work smart and be efficient. The hospital leadership knows this is a tricky situation, so if we can pull it off, and I know we can, they’ll be very happy with the results. Remember to escalate quickly to me if you realize one of your clinics might introduce a delay. With your help, we can finish this project strong and impress the hospital stakeholders. Thank you!