Author C. Northcote Parkinson wrote, “The man whose life is devoted to paperwork has lost the initiative. He is dealing with things that are brought to his notice, having ceased to notice anything himself.” Paperwork is the bane of all existence, it’s true. We have our work. And then we have the paperwork. It’s like having a great dinner at home. You eat. And then you have the dishes. We see a lot of project managers who are so busy working that the paperwork gets left by the wayside. While there is some that is extraneous, I’m going to make a case for this necessary evil – and say it’s not so evil at all.

You’re team is over budget and not hitting objectives. They’re indecisive and uncertain they have the resources to carry out the task at hand. Enter the project recovery consultant. This is a powerful resource that has been sold for its far reaching and invaluable benefits. When your project is failing and you’re business is in crisis mode, expertise can help you more effectively capture objectives, identify key tasks and improve work processes that ultimately lead to a successful end. But as the consultant-client relationship evolves, an even more significant benefit has revealed itself. And businesses are quickly realizing how the right consultant can help them discover assets they never even knew they had.

Some projects do go off the rails. It would be nice if they didn’t, but, sometimes a confluence of factors makes it very difficult to complete a project according to plan. Since millions of dollars are at stake, as well as the long-term sustainability of the company, it becomes necessary to bring in a project recovery consultant to help turn a project around. How do you choose the right person for the job?

When I come into an organization, it is not to criticize a team’s work or to dismantle the team piece by piece; it is to make the team effective and get the project on track.

Everyone managing a project becomes intimately familiar with Finagle’s Law of Dynamic Negatives: “Anything that can go wrong, will – at the worst possible moment.” The project doesn’t start on time; crucial milestones are missed; team members don’t communicate; you’re going over-budget; there are too many status meetings and not enough action. While you do not know which specific challenges you will face for a particular project, you can take steps to ensure that they do not turn into crises.