Despite popular perceptions, project management is not just for large enterprises or huge undertakings. Projects are every organization’s change agents. Without them nothing improves; you simply maintain the status quo. And this is why projects can be so difficult, your teams are often building something they have never built before. A project is any temporary endeavor you undertake to create a unique product, service, or result.

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It is rarely the technical stuff that sinks the new manager. It is the people stuff. They know how to make a widget but they do not know how to lead and manage people to make the widget. So, to help you help your mangers, here are five expensive people problems we consistently seeing managers avoiding.

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Employees do not care about empty, motivational, “strategy” talks that simply re-package the same “work harder” message. But we know, based on our own research, that they do care about your organization. And they do care about your customers. The problem is not the apathy of your workforce, but that managers rarely are able to connect their work to the overall purpose of the company. Here are the most common reasons we have found why managers fail to communicate the overall company strategy to their teams. Also, we include five quick tips on how managers can connect their employees to your organization’s strategy.

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Effective managers create relationships with each of their directs. And the best way we know to make that happen is to have regular one-on-ones. Meeting with each of your direct reports is nothing new. So why don’t managers make it happen? Here are the most common reasons we hear from managers.

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There are two main reasons managers must provide their employees with feedback. One, good employees want their managers to pay attention to their work. They want to “win” at their jobs. Instant feedback is the fastest way to create the learning loops they need to improve. And two, small issues are often only the surface of a larger problem.

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