“Your project scope has doubled overnight. How do you ensure your tasks are still on track?”
LinkedIn briefly introduced “collaborative articles”, which were questions that anyone could answer. They wound up abandoning the feature, but I enjoyed responding to them with my own brief mental health focused rants. I also only had 750 characters and no options for gifs, so this is WAY better. :)
Let’s get into it.
“Your project scope has doubled overnight. How do you ensure your tasks are still on track?”
???? WHAT. ???
YOU DON’T.
Unless you have secretly also cloned yourself overnight, the second the scope doubles, the original plan is OUT THE WINDOW. Everything changes at once: timelines, resources, priorities, the entire structure of the project. And if leadership pretends otherwise, what they are really saying is, “We failed to plan, and now you and your team can absorb the fallout.”
The first move is to fight scope creep like your job depends on it. Lay out exactly what breaks if the work doubles without additional support. Call out the deadlines that will slip, the resources that are missing, and the quality that will inevitably suffer. And do not leave it vague. Put it in writing so no one can develop convenient amnesia later. If they want double the work, they need to double the time, the budget, or the people. Anything less is not leadership, it is wishful thinking and it is ridiculous.
And if they still push forward? Then you slow the pace and you protect your team. You work methodically instead of frantically. You reset expectations every step of the way. And you refuse to let executives act like the impossible can be done if everyone just “leans in” a little harder. If they want miracles, let them roll up their sleeves and handle half the workload themselves.
Here is the truth: you are not a magician, you are a leader. Leaders do not burn out their teams to cover for bad planning. Leaders do not sell the lie that nothing has changed when everything just changed. Leaders tell the truth, even when it is uncomfortable, and they fight for what their people actually need to succeed.
If executives want to live in fantasyland, that is their problem. But you do not sacrifice your team to protect them from reality. Put the facts on the table, make them own their choices, and refuse to let your people be crushed under someone else’s failure to plan.
Nothing destroys morale faster than pretending the impossible is achievable if people are simply willing to wreck themselves to get there.
The Threadsmith Group Approach
At The Threadsmith Group, we don’t believe in cookie-cutter advice. We believe in real answers for real people, backed by experience, strategy, and a healthy dose of common sense.
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