Implementing Project Management Policy; Making it Stick

According to Albert Mehrabian, a UCLA professor, within 30 days, people forget 90 percent of what they have learned unless it is repeatedly reinforced.

This is why it's futile to roll out project management policy, or even processes, unless there is some facility to repeatedly reinforce it. How do we do this?

Let's look to Dale Carnegie for advice. According to Dale Carnegie, there are only three ways we memorize something:

1. Impression - Visual impressions work best, since the nerves leading from the eye to the brain are twenty-five times as large as those from the ear to the brain. Use pictures to get people to remember things.
2. Repetition - Practice makes perfect. Work with people, coaching them regularly. But don't expect miracles up front. It must be done in iterations, getting one part right at a time. With practice, and some mistakes, the new way will become second nature.
3. Association - Create associations that will make things easy to remember. Try to make connections with some "easy-to-remember" fact, or even an acronym of some sort.

Having a policy manual can help people up front, but it typically gets put aside and ignored within a few months at best. To really make important policies and processes stick, conduct frequent project reviews and proactive coaching. Use the above tips for helping to reinforce new methods. But above all, don't expect overnight results. Focusing on one area at a time will increase chances of long-term success and increase morale as well.

To implement an entire new way of working and attempt to hold people to it on "day one" is counterproductive, de-motivating, and futile.