Where is John?

Hi ,

It's June 1st.

Somewhere on your team right now, there's a project schedule barreling toward Q3 deliverables. And somewhere in that same team, there are airline tickets already purchased, hotels already booked, and kids already counting down the days until school lets out.

The question is.... does your risk register know about any of it?

Summer is here. Are you Prepared?

Now, let's get Proactive Over Reactive!

"Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe." ~President Abraham Lincoln

Lesson of the Week

I've been managing projects and leading people since 2006. And one of the first things I hammered into every young lieutenant I led in the Marine Corps was this: never assume your people will be there when you need them. Manning is a resource. Resources require planning. And planning requires knowing the truth about what you actually have available, not what you wish you had.

In the Corps, an unavailable Marine wasn't an inconvenience. It was a mission risk. You planned for it, or you paid for it.

I carried that same discipline into every project I've touched in the civilian world. And yet, year after year, I watch teams get blindsided by the most predictable risk on the calendar.

Summer.

The Risk You Can See Coming From Miles Away

Here's the scenario I've watched play out more times than I can count.

It's a Monday morning in mid-July. The project manager pulls up the schedule, checks the task board, and then looks up with that look on their face.

"Hey — where's John?"

John is in Italy. With his family. For two weeks. Tickets purchased in February. And John is the only person on the team who knows how to build the deliverable that's due on Friday.

This is 100% preventable. And it starts with one simple act: treating summer vacations as a formal project risk.

Here's the risk statement you can copy directly onto your register today:

"Due to summer vacation schedules, there is a risk to the project schedule as critical resources may be out of office, resulting in missed deadlines and/or reduced capacity and throughput of work."

Write it down. Log it. Own it.

---

What You Do With It

Identifying the risk is step one. Here's what being proactive actually looks like:

• Get the schedules. Ask your team now. Not in July. Now. Who's out, when, and for how long?
• Map them against your project schedule. Load those OOO windows into your scheduling tool and see where the gaps are. Where does capacity drop? Which tasks are at risk?
• Find where you can surge. Can you front-load work before the vacation windows hit? Can you cross-train someone to cover a critical task?
• Communicate it to your stakeholders. This is the one most PMs skip, and it's the most important step. Your stakeholders need to know that from June 15 through July 15, your team is running at 70% capacity. That Deliverable X is going to push right by two weeks. Tell them now, not when it happens.

This is what Proactive over Reactive looks like in practice. You're not waiting for Monday morning to ask "Where is John?" You're the PM who already knows John is in Italy, already adjusted the schedule in May, and already briefed the sponsor three weeks ago.

That's the difference between a good project manager and a great one.

The Bearded Risk PM on YouTube Watch the full video on: "Risk Registers Done Wrong | This is What Happens" ​ Don't Forget to Like the Video, Subscribe to the Channel, and Leave any Questions You Have in the Comments!