As a team Lead, if your team is strugling you should have set clearer expectations, delivery timelines and objectives - communication and accountability are the key. Breaking down the project into smaller deliverables is a good start. Encouraging open communication and regular check-ins create structure and team momentum. To be honest, post-factum, if the project is high-stake and your team is failing the deadlines, you'd have to roll up your sleeves and get to deliver. Team members often get motivated and inspired by personal example. Do a post-mortem and analyse to find the root cause of the problem. Take notes, improve and get better for the next project 🙏🏻

Timely delivery in high-stakes projects requires clear communication and accountability. Break the project into smaller milestones, encourage regular progress updates, and use collaborative tools to track tasks. Creating a culture of ownership ensures team members stay on track and meet deadlines.

When team members are missing deadlines, especially in high-stakes projects, I first try to find out what’s really causing the delays. Whether it's a workload, confusion about the tasks or something else, understanding the root cause is key. Regular check-ins are a game-changer because they help catch any issues early. I also break down big tasks into smaller, manageable pieces with clear deadlines so no one gets overwhelmed. Open communication is essential – people need to feel comfortable raising concerns before they become bigger problems. Finally, leading by example and being hands-on when necessary shows the team you're in it with them, which can inspire them to push through challenges.

I think that if your team is typically delivering on time and suddenly the mark is being missed, there are some bigger questions here: Is the project scoped correctly? Are features being snuck into the sprint? Is your team being diverted by "drive-bys" If it's not an anomaly, then I think the question comes down to your practices and workflows. Maybe the way you do your work isn't aligned with the work you're trying to do. All of that said, the recovery path is the same: Rescope the work and break it into smaller chunks with more rapid deliverables so you can keep a pulse on small pieces instead of large ones. It's easy to make minor course corrections, but it's hard to turn the boat around.

Diagnosing a problem such as missed deadline requires situational awareness and seeing what combination of factors is in play. Is it the leader, the client, the project manager, the process and its controls, or the individual contributor that failed in some aspect? It needs a root cause analysis, and my experience is there is usually more than one cause. One reason is that a good process will have controls, so for a deadline to slip also the controls in place were inadequate. So that alone means at least two things had to fail.