As many of us know, there is a lot of paperwork involved in most processes within projects whether it is for monitoring or documentation purposes and individual companies have different Quality Management Systems. While it is easy to say make documentation enough to be sufficient in recording all necessary information while not being too much that it inhibits the progression of the project but actually doing that is hard. in some cases preparing for weekly presentations takes up more time that it should leaving you with only enough time to deal with the now without necessarily being able to reevaluate the current situation in terms of scope, progression, and how new information ties into the grand scheme of things. This makes it more of a reactive management as opposed to preventative which may result in more critical failures in projects. Do you think reactive management in a bad thing? if not, why? if so, how do you suggest companies tackle the balance of documenting and actually fulfilling a task?
Reactive management is not terrible if it can be used correctly. If the manager still applies himself and is able to keep the long term goals on track, and able to accomplish their own tasks at the same time (without being swamped in emails) then it is great. But this often doesn't happen. The problem becomes when they put off the long term work to much and create newer short term problems that just keep stacking.
There are suggested methods to "breaking the cycle" of constantly putting off long term work to solve the short term problem that was made because you had putt off previous long term work. The way that I see it, is to handle every problem with your full attention. If you are given a problem then you should truly evaluate your plan of action and determine what will have the best outcome. I think this also means more communication and meetings between members and having a manager who is good at balancing their own work as well as being open and able to think long term. It may be harder/ more work for a reactive manager to do this, but this is why they are in that position so they should be able to handle it.
Preventative management is ideal. In a sense, reactive management leads to more of the documentation and other factors that you mentioned can lead to delays in progress. Preventative management is the best way to keep to a time and cost budget. However, it is possible to go through an entire project without needing any reactive management. Unforseen issues will take place in the project regardless of how much preventative action is implemented. Preventative management simply minimizes the amount of reactive management needed.
A problem is much easier to handle if it can be avoided. While this sounds redundant and obvious it is often over looked. The work to fix a problem can lead to much larger issues than the one problem being solved. Once a document is opened for revision it often needs significantly more changes then just the one item you opened it to fix. changing a single component can be simple but it can also open a month long project of trying to get approval that can leave you incapable of doing other work. Proper planning prevents pretty poor performance. A small amount of time preparing can lead to significantly less time needed to fix the problem.
Reactive management is most certainly not a bad thing if it required. Hopefully, it will not be required as a good PM should be able to account for any delays or foreseeable issues. Usually reactive management is characterized by a lack of proper planning. Reactive management is also referred to as "firefighting"; which means that the manager has to put out the fire. The fire in this concept is whatever issue has risen due to improper planning. This could due to a task not be fulfilled or possibly even a setback due a failure of product. Personally, I believe it is better to be proactive than reactive in such that possible issues are accounted for beforehand. Hindsight of course is always 20/20, and a human cannot possibly account for everything so issues will always arise. However, one should look at big picture problems that could cause large amounts of time to be wasted from issues.
Reactive management is sometimes unavoidable. Proper planning is crucial, but there will always be issues that arise that either you couldn't or didn't foresee. Things happen. Having a robust system to ensure that any problems are solved quickly is vital. As jb678 said proactive is better than reactive. We're only human. We can't always see every possible outcome. What we can do is prepare and be ready to face those possible outcomes as quickly as possible.
I believe our company tackles this issue wisely. Each employee has a manager that practices reactive management. But each employee is assigned to a team and each team has a lead. That lead practices preventive management. This combination allows for the good in each style of management to be used and the outcome is a smooth and complete work effort. The manager oversees a couple of teams, makes presentations and focuses on the high level things like cost and efficiency. The lead member deals with things happening now or happened already. He deals with project details and work being done and already done and the delivery of that work. Each one had their part and it is a lot more efficient this way.
As many of us know, there is a lot of paperwork involved in most processes within projects whether it is for monitoring or documentation purposes and individual companies have different Quality Management Systems. While it is easy to say make documentation enough to be sufficient in recording all necessary information while not being too much that it inhibits the progression of the project but actually doing that is hard. in some cases preparing for weekly presentations takes up more time that it should leaving you with only enough time to deal with the now without necessarily being able to reevaluate the current situation in terms of scope, progression, and how new information ties into the grand scheme of things. This makes it more of a reactive management as opposed to preventative which may result in more critical failures in projects. Do you think reactive management in a bad thing? if not, why? if so, how do you suggest companies tackle the balance of documenting and actually fulfilling a task?
Ideally, said company would have a hierarchy of engineers/support staff to "do the paperwork". Senior level staff can focus on getting the tasks done, while lower level staff/administrative staff can work on documentation.
In practice, most companies don't have the luxury of a support staff, as well as the constant miscommunication between people. It's natural that information falls through the cracks. I'd say 75% of my time is spent in firefighter/reactive mode.
@ka234 Additionally, I find that in some companies, it falls on certain departments to take on the reactive, "firefighter" issues that are caused by other departments within the company. While working at Johnson and Johnson, I found that my manager and members within our team had to deal with the brunt of fixing other peoples mistakes related to tasks that were time-dependent. As such they were tasked with additional work, and largely did not get credit for their work because it was not in their work description. However, to achieve the various project timelines and be within scope, members of the team and department have to fix others' problems. So I would agree that a lot of the time is spent in reactive mode.
As many of us know, there is a lot of paperwork involved in most processes within projects whether it is for monitoring or documentation purposes and individual companies have different Quality Management Systems. While it is easy to say make documentation enough to be sufficient in recording all necessary information while not being too much that it inhibits the progression of the project but actually doing that is hard. in some cases preparing for weekly presentations takes up more time that it should leaving you with only enough time to deal with the now without necessarily being able to reevaluate the current situation in terms of scope, progression, and how new information ties into the grand scheme of things. This makes it more of a reactive management as opposed to preventative which may result in more critical failures in projects. Do you think reactive management in a bad thing? if not, why? if so, how do you suggest companies tackle the balance of documenting and actually fulfilling a task?
I am currently editing two SOPs at work to make sure our procedures are compliant to EU MDR, and it has been difficult getting opinions on how specific yet broad we can make the SOP without changing other documents. A lot of the tasks my team is given are reactive in nature, because we are changing our documents to be compliant to new standards. We edit documents to make sure they are the same as what we're doing on the production floor, but there is the other side where the production floor is not aware of the changes we made to the procedure, and that requires training the production staff and making sure they make the changes by the timeline given. Reactive management is not a bad thing per se because these issues had to be fixed, but I can see why someone would see it as bad because these issues could have been addressed prior. It does slow progress down because a lot of components go into change, but there also is no other option other than to react when the issue arises, rather than later when it becomes an even bigger problem.
I also agree that reactive management is not necessarily bad, but preventative management is preferred. It is best to leave reactive management to circumstances which need immediate and sudden action, as the name implies. If people only relied on reactive management, there would be increased levels of stress on all team members, since nothing is carefully planned out. I think most would prefer a sense of control via preventative management and consequently, a less anxious working environment. In the case of balancing documentation and the fulfillment of a task, the documentation part is usually done as a group so that everyone is on the same page, while the carrying-out of various tasks are usually carried out by a specific members. However, the documentation process can also be considered as a task in itself.
Reactive management is necessary in any business. It is true at times we have to cover others' mistakes but one must prioritize the goal of the project. Having leads to help manage and react allows action to be taken immediately make reactive management successful
The only experience I have with reactive management is at my last internship where my boss was put under a lot stress from it. Me and him were very casual with each other so I would see him and he'd be telling me about how much stuff he has to do to keep management updated. He always seemed very stressed with that job but he moved to a new one and he seemed much happier when we reconnected.
That being said I can see a situation where reactive management works. I think even in that situation it didn't necessarily have to be a bad thing. We worked in a healthcare startup/small sized company so it was important to keep track of metrics and have accomplishments on hand and milestones kept ready in mind. I'm not sure how much of my old company's reactive management produced actually useful documentation, but like I said, I can see where reactive management could be beneficial for a company if implemented in the right way.
Reactive management can happen due to a crisis or unexpected situation arising in the company. But a habitual reactive management style is not that good. Reactive management tends to result sometimes in poor quality also you may miss to identify strategic opportunities as you are always focused at solving an urgent issue at hand. Team members could end up stressed as well. Therefore it is better to allow some time for planning and to switch to a healthier proactive management style. The main step in doing so is to take back control of time. Then it comes to risk management to make sure you do not have to fall back to reactive management again.
Reactive management is very details oriented in order to monitor and review every single task and step throughout the project. I feel like reactive management is somewhat necessary for the progress of the project but to a certain extent. I strongly believe that everything that is being done should be documented as a part of the quality management process internally, even if this documentation is not necessary for the completion of the project or for the FDA submission. Any company should follow their internal process so that during an audit everything would be traceable and justified to the auditor; it just gives an easy way to follow everything. Now when it comes for example to the last stages of the project, documents that are needed for submission should be finalized first then the documents per the internal process should be worked on after once the submission is completed in order not to waste time. This is completely appropriate if it is just a matter of documenting everything and it is not applicable to missing or pending data. In terms of meetings and presentations, I agree that meetings and presentations on the updates of the project can sometimes be time consuming and unnecessary to the progress of the team. The team should limit those presentation to only when there is a critical task and they are trying to update the leadership team about the decision made or discuss different strategies to move forward. Otherwise the project manager should be communicating small updates every week in a form on an email, not necessarily a presentation to just make sure that everyone is on the same page about the progress of the project.
