Summary: Play Now: This episode is sponsored by The PM PrepCast for The PMP Exam: How do you know whether or not someone is actually doing the work they are supposed to be doing on your project? Well.. we could assume that if they are assigned to your project then they must be working on the project, right? Well… maybe. But sometimes it is not so clear. Sometimes you just don’t have that “warm fuzzy feeling”. And that pretty much is the point where today’s interview with Margaret Meloni (http://www.margaretmeloni.com/) starts. From here we will explore how such situations can occur, how line managers could be responsible for causing this kind of feeling in us project managers and we’ll take a look at a few examples from Margaret’s professional life. But most importantly of course, we will look at what can be done to both avoid and deal with such situations. This PM Podcast interview is based on Margaret Meloni's coachinar titled 3 Reasons People Do Not Do Their Jobs (And What to Do About It)... Below are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only. Podcast Introduction Cornelius Fichtner: Hello and welcome to Episode # 270. This is the Project Management Podcast™ at www.pm-podcast.com and I am Cornelius Fichtner. Welcome back. How do you know whether or not someone is actually doing the work they are supposed to be doing on your project? Well, we could assume that if they are assigned to our project then well they must be working on the project, right? Well maybe. But sometimes it's not so clear. Sometimes you just don’t have that warm, fuzzy feeling with someone and that pretty much is the point where today's interview with Margaret Meloni get started. From here, we will explore how such situations can occur. How line managers could be responsible for causing this kind of feeling in us project managers and we'll take a look at a few examples from Margaret's professional life. But most importantly, of course, we will look at what can be done to both avoid and then also deal with such situations. And now, are you really listening? Enjoy the interview. Podcast Interview Female voice: The Project Management Podcast’s feature Interview: Today with Margaret Meloni, Community Leader at www.elearning4pms.com and www.pmstudent.com. Cornelius Fichtner: Hello Margaret. Welcome back to The Project Management Podcast™! Margaret Meloni: Thank you. Great to be here as always! Cornelius Fichtner: Ah, I'm very happy to have you. So you have sent me a draft article that's going to be published in one of ezines in the coming weeks and listeners who listen to this in the year 2025, for them it will already be in the past. And this article is going to talk about whether or not resources on your projects are actually working and working for you and not working for someone else. Let's set the stage here. What is the takeaway going to be for our listeners here? Margaret Meloni: Sometimes you start a project and you’re not feeling comfortable as to whether or not the people who are showing up and smiling at you in status meetings, as to whether or not they really jumped in to the work yet and we're going to look at that situation and tackle it and see how do you know and what can you do about it, and how can you prevent this. Cornelius Fichtner: Okay. So set this up a little bit more for me. So we have a team meeting and people are coming in and what's the problem that we are trying to solve right now? Margaret Meloni: Well, it's something like this and I'll just tell you right now. I know that this has happened to me and other people have to come with this as well. Say, it's the beginning of your project. It's definitely within the first month. You're doing a great job. You've already had the kickoff. You have people assigned to you and you are having them come in for, let's say, good weekly updates and you run high-quality good meetings. And there's at least, there's one resource who c
