Proper project management is a critical organizational task on which the success of the company’s goals and operational practice improvements depend. However, the work environment can force managers to leave projects not yet completed due to the need to reassign to other, higher priority tasks. Leaving a project cannot be implemented immediately and without due attention to the agenda, which remains the responsibility of the new manager — on the contrary, an effective manager must make sure that the project passes into safe hands and that all the resources and knowledge gathered are used in a quality manner.
For this reason, in the last week before leaving, it is critical not to start new initiatives and programs but to focus on the results that have already been achieved. The ideal approach is to spend the last week collecting as much varied information as possible about implementing earlier project phases and categorizing them into a single registry (Harvey et al., 2020). When the new leader arrives at the tasks, the report prepared will be the foundation for implementing the following steps and formal validation of the earlier work. Among others, such categorization should include a description of all the problems and barriers encountered by those in charge because, in this case, it will be possible to minimize the resources of time and money to use the experience already learned.
Since the project focuses primarily on improving clinical operations and engages nurses as critical resources in modernizing relationships with patients, the fundamental interest of the new leader should be to strive to create a nurse-friendly environment. In the new leader, I would look for accountability and performance, combined with a healthy continuity of experience and respect for the work of their colleagues (Geib & Boenigk, 2022). A situation in which all of the lessons learned in the stages of the project that have already been passed must be eliminated or deliberately ignored. In addition, because the project involves many stakeholders, I expect the manager to be able to motivate and inspire.
As a precautionary measure to ensure that the changes initially laid out will be used and bring results, I would lay down the need for a third-party audit at the end of the project. An independent audit would evaluate the effectiveness of the measures developed and the adequacy of the results achieved and be able to detect where mistakes, if any, were made. For me, an audit would be confirmation that the work under my responsibility was done correctly, and no critical errors were made, which would also formalize the experience in case of undesirable outcomes.
References
Geib, N., & Boenigk, S. (2022). Improving nonprofit succession management for leadership continuity: A shared leadership approach.Nonprofit Management and Leadership, 1-30. Web.
Harvey, G., Kelly, J., Kitson, A., Thornton, K., & Owen, V. (2020). Leadership for evidence-based practice—Enforcing or enabling implementation?Collegian, 27(1), 57-62. Web.