Six signs of the invisible cost of people problems on your project

When projects slip behind schedule or budgets balloon, it’s easy to blame the usual suspects: scope creep, contractual wrangles or technical hiccoughs. But often, the real culprit is people issues – miscommunication, mismatched expectations or simmering tensions quietly derailing progress long before your Gantt chart shows red.

Here’s the hard truth: there’s no silver bullet for people problems. You can’t fix them overnight with a single workshop or memo, or a new set of values on the wall. Instead, it takes consistent effort, including reflecting on your own actions and making small, steady changes that build trust and alignment over time.

Here are the top six signs of people problems on your project, the risks they bring and simple solutions you can apply. Why? Because spotting and quantifying people‑related risks early makes the difference between project firefighting and smooth delivery.

1. Endless meetings that go nowhere

Conversations circle endlessly, decisions are deferred and the project team leaves meetings unclear on next steps.

Cost: Lost momentum, wasted resource hours and a demoralised team.

One simple solution: Set the meeting up right every time, with a clear purpose and the right people (not every person and their dog!). Ensure the meeting is well led/facilitated and has clear outputs/outcomes – and follow up.

2. Us v them (blame games and poor communication)

Teams retreat into silos, defend their turf and spend more energy on finger‑pointing than solving problems.

Cost: Duplicated work, delayed approvals, slower problem-solving, fragile handovers and single‑person dependencies.

One simple solution: Facilitate a cross‑team session to surface pain points, then tackle one issue together to rebuild trust and collaboration.

3. Silent stakeholders and passive resistance

Sponsors nod along but don’t engage, while team members quietly resist new processes or drag their feet.

Cost: Late rework, undermined change programmes and ‘pretend compliance’ that masks real delays.

One simple solution: Hold short, regular check‑ins with sponsors and teams, using a simple one‑page log to track decisions and commitments.

4. Overloaded key players

The same few individuals are constantly leaned on, becoming bottlenecks and showing signs of stress or burnout.

Cost: Quality issues, missed deadlines, stress/burnout (absence) and higher attrition risk.

One simple solution: Be clear on the ask, especially with new demands and be prepared to negotiate what stops, using assigned deputies to share the load, to protect focus time for core contributors.

5. Constant firefighting and decision bottlenecks

Every day feels like crisis management, with progress stalled while waiting for one person’s approval.

Cost: Burnout, disengagement and paralysis that inflates timelines and budgets.

One simple solution: Set up a simple escalation path and delegate routine approvals, so decisions don’t grind to a halt at one person’s desk. In the long term, be clear what the quality of input and output is for each step of a process, so that decisions are made at the right level.

6. Knowledge hoarding and poor handovers

If vital project knowledge is locked away in the heads of a few individuals or scattered across emails and personal folders, it’s a big risk. It gives you a single point of failure that, combined with the other issues that might make people more at risk of burnout or flight, becomes significant.

Cost: Slow onboarding, repeated mistakes, wasted effort and patchy continuity.

One simple solution: Make knowledge-sharing part of everyday disciplines, and record knowledge in a shared space. Note down key decisions straight after meetings, record fixes when problems are solved, and capture handover points centrally as they happen.

Conclusion

Scope creep and technical glitches are part of project life, but people problems carry huge hidden costs and risks. Make 2026 the year of project success through people. Here are three things you can do tomorrow:

Start small. Review how meetings run, who makes decisions, sponsor engagement and knowledge-sharing.
Reflect on your own behaviours. Culture starts with leadership.
Run a short diagnostic to quantify hidden costs. (Try our free check at www.theharrisonnetwork.co.uk/cost-calculator).