A smart Project Update meeting technique

I was once involved in a project where the project manager did something that struck me as unusual at first, but which I came to find was quite an effective technique.

At the very start of every meeting he asked “How are things going? Do you have any feedback to give on the project?”

In the early meetings the response from the stakeholders was usually a polite “Everything seems to be going well” kind of comment, which our PM recorded in the minutes. Over the course of the project though, the feedback became richer and more beneficial, often praising the efforts of particular team members.

The value of this is significant.

• Firstly, it opens the communication channels and lets all stakeholders know that their feedback is invited and valued.
• Secondly, it establishes a positive atmosphere in the early stages of the project, and gives excellent opportunity for people to provide positive feedback on team members.
• Thirdly, it allows the PM to keep a close eye on the sentiment of the project – especially if he is not on site every day to observe it for himself.

This is an excellent project management device that is really easy to implement – start asking for feedback in every project meeting and see it work for you.

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It isn’t fine when everything’s fine

How many projects are too many?

Play the Project Management Game

Doing a lot but not getting ahead?

Greg has a lot to do.

He begins each day with a huge task list, determined to complete as many things as he can. He gets through a lot but at the end of each day there are always a few tasks that don’t get done, usually the ones that take a little longer – so they’re moved onto the next day and become a little more urgent.

Greg is playing the volume game; he’s judging his performance by how many tasks he can do. While he feels like he’s getting a lot done, he’s constantly stressed out by the high number of urgent tasks that interrupt his day.

If Greg approached his task list in a different way, he’d find that while initially he might not get as many tasks done, he’d end up with a smaller number of urgent tasks, more time and less stress.

So how do you approach your tasks differently? Try to identify tasks that have specific benefits – these are the important ones:

•    Identify if a task is something that will save you time in the future. An example is taking the time to work out proper estimates for a project – if you estimate poorly, the impact on your time in the future will be much greater than the time you spend estimating.

•    Identify if a task will increase your understanding of a project – this will help you avoid a crisis in the future, which is always time-consuming. For example, forming a deep understanding of a new project today may result in a question which, if asked now, will allow you to decide a course of action that will avoid a problem in the future.

•    Identify if a task is directly related to generating income, either for your company or for yourself.

•    Identify if a task builds a relationship with a customer – relationships lead to business.

•    Identify if a task builds a personal relationship – personal relationships improve the quality of your life.

•    Identify if the task improves your ability to enjoy life – tasks involving health, personal financial security and stress reduction.

You’ll find the number of important tasks is quite small and on most days, you’ll have time for other tasks. And if you make sure you get the important things done, you’ll have less urgent tasks, you’ll be more in control and ultimately you’ll be more successful.

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Effective project managers live in the future

How to take action – the key to productivity

Conquer the dark sides of perfectionism

There’s a dark side?

Being a perfectionist is good, isn’t it? It means you do something right, first time and every time and it’s something a lot of people aspire to. Well, actually perfection is a highly overrated goal which can disrupt your working life and kill your dreams.

First, to do something perfectly usually takes a lot of effort. You do it, re-do it, re-re-do it and it’s still not quite right, and you’re way over your deadline. The people relying on you find this frustrating, even if your work is totally flawless – they’re held up by your strive for an ideal when they would have been just as satisfied with an on-time result that gave them what they wanted. They’ll stop getting you to do work for them and you may find yourself moved on.

The solution to this is to know that a ‘perfect’ job is one that exactly meets the expected level of results. If you’re going to be perfect at something, be perfect at finding out what that level is and meeting it, rather than applying your own exacting, and possibly inaccurate, measures.

The real dark side

The second problem with being a perfectionist is that it causes you to delay or, worse still, not start things because you fear you won’t be able to do a perfect job straight away.

As you progress through life, you naturally get better at things, and you grow accustomed to finding success at a decreasing range of activities.

As a child, you put in a huge amount of effort into learning to walk, and most of that time was spent on your backside. Most adults would not put that much effort into learning something, especially if they had such setbacks – they’d say ‘I’m just not good at this – it didn’t work for me the first time, I’ll go back to something I know I can do’.

At work, you may stick to the job you know, even though it’s boring, because you think, quite rightly, that you won’t be perfect in that challenging new job immediately. Or you might put off doing that huge paper because you know you won’t be happy with the first draft – suddenly it’s due and your job’s on the line.

Say you dream of becoming an artist, or a writer, or a tennis ace. But knowing the amount of work that will be needed before you reach a level of average proficiency, you don’t try at all. All that effort, just to become average?

So what’s the answer?

Realise what world champions, and toddlers, already know – no-one’s perfect the first time at something new. Keep working on it and you’ll start to see small, ever-increasing successes that will spur you on and reinforce your efforts – the occasional really good brush-stroke, a pretty great turn of phrase or a better than average tennis serve.

And keep trying – don’t let the dark side of perfectionism prevent you from chasing your dreams.

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How are you managing your reputation?

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How are you managing your reputation?

 

Spend a few moments considering the reputations of people you know. Some have a reputation for great technical ability, some for excellent project delivery – perhaps some have a reputation for late task completion or poor punctuality. What do you have a reputation for?

A reputation is a promise. It tells someone what they can expect when they deal with you. Importantly, it’s a promise that’s created not by your words, but by your actions. It’s your personal brand – your personal marketing. When someone recommends you, it’s based on your reputation.

In the same way that successful businesses actively manage their brand, you should actively manage your reputation – it will take you wherever you want to go in your career.

So how do you manage your reputation?

1. What do you want your reputation to be? Do you want to be known for your leadership; for being hard-line and decisive or being a compassionate, consensus-style project manager? Do you want a reputation for being an excellent communicator, a reputation for being responsive, proactive or well organized? Write down the elements that will make up your ‘brand’.
2. What are you doing about it? What specific things can you do – every day – to build your reputation through your actions? How will you conduct yourself – what will you change? Write this down too, so you can do these actions every day.
3. What are you doing (or not doing) that’s undermining your reputation? If you want a reputation for strong leadership, but procrastinate about decisions, your actions are actually giving you a reputation for weak leadership. Remember doing nothing still contributes to your reputation – but it won’t be the reputation you want.
4. How are you monitoring your reputation? It’s a good reality check if you can find someone who will be honest with you.

My suggestion is to take the daily actions you come up with and add them to your leading indicator checklist. That way you’ll quickly incorporate effective reputation-building actions into your routine.

You’ll be surprised at how quickly you can build the reputation you want by simply managing it actively and giving it a little focus every day. Remember, no action is still an action!

What will you do today to build your reputation?

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Effective project managers live in the future

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Effective project managers live in the future

There are two types of project manager: those who live in the past and those who live in the future. Those living in the past are so busy dealing with tasks that were due yesterday that they haven’t got time to think about what’s going to clobber them tomorrow – they’re reactive. Those who live in the future think ahead, mitigating future risks and finding opportunities for project gains – they’re proactive and as a result, effective.

Leading indicator checklists are a great tool to help you become proactive – but how do you know what your leading indicators are? To identify them, first look at the disciplines you need to be outstanding in your project management role.

The disciplines

Good project management disciplines include:

• Pro-activity: Thinking ahead, anticipating risks, seeking opportunities to advance ahead of the plan.
• Stakeholder communication: Making sure stakeholders feel informed and included.
• Professionalism & reputation: Being prompt in response to calls, emails and queries. Managing meetings effectively.
• Leadership of project team: Being an effective leader, building team cohesion, fostering communication flow.
• Adding value: Finding ways to ’stand out from the crowd’ – to contribute something extra to stakeholders or to the project at no real cost.

You may identify other disciplines that are important for you – great, keep going.

Actions from the disciplines

Now identify all the actions that you can to do to help build that discipline. Some won’t make it into your leading indicators checklist, but they’ll still be useful for focussing on project health, team performance etc.

Make a daily checklist

The secret to success with leading indicators is to turn them into a checklist. This Harvard article about checklists shows why they are so powerful.

From your list of actions, make a checklist of those you can do daily that, combined, will support all the disciplines. You’ll find some actions you can use as a basic core, and some that will vary from project to project depending on targets and people. Pick an effective yet manageable number – too many and you’ll end up back in the past.

My personal checklist always contains at least the following six actions:

Daily Leading Indicators		Why I use this action
Have I spoken with each of my team? Leadership, Adding value		Talking with team members provides insight into their strengths, weaknesses and motivations – vital for good leadership.
Have I updated task status in the WBS and reviewed future tasks? Professionalism, Leadership, Pro-activity		Using conversations with the project team members, you can tell exactly where your project is up to and can quickly identify and deal with any potential problems. Reviewing future tasks also helps you think of optimisations you can make to progress the project.
Have I reviewed and updated project risks? (Pro-activity, Professionalism)		If you want to think about the future, reviewing risks is a great place to start.
Have I spoken with my stakeholders? Stakeholder communication, Leadership, Adding value		I believe that talking (not email) is essential to building effective working relationships. A phone call is quick and establishes a personal connection. The more you talk with customers, the easier it gets, and the easier it is to add value. I find reasons to speak with stakeholders as often as I can.
Have I sent actions/minutes from my meetings on the same day as the meeting? Professionalism, Leadership, Adding value		By being consistently efficient, you set an expectation of performance and professionalism for all members of the team, internal and external. Meeting attendees will learn that your minutes will contain all their actions and makes it far more likely the actions will be done.
Have I followed up phone conversations with email? Professionalism, Leadership, Communication, Adding value		This reduces the risk of you or the recipient forgetting or misunderstanding what was discussed and provides an opportunity for them to clarify anything. Keep the email short, and use bullet points – it’s easier to read and more effective as a reminder.

 

When completing the checklist, keep it simple. The answer to the indicator question is either yes or no.

Use your checklist every day and reviewing your results each week and you will easily identify if you’re consistently missing an action. This lets you rectify it before you slip back into reactive mode.

Leading indicator checklists are a powerful tool to
help you to become more proactive and effective- they keep you on top of your projects and free up more time for you to think about the future.

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How many projects are too many?

How many projects are too many?

Most project managers take on, or are given, too much to do – project after project comes along until it’s obvious they’re struggling. But by that stage, the damage is already done – milestones are in jeopardy, customers are dissatisfied and project teams are stressed.

I was recently asked to get involved in a project that was in trouble. With a little focus in the right areas, I’m pleased to report that the project is back on track, and I’ve considered offering to help on other projects for the organisation. But while I want to work at my optimum level, I don’t want to inadvertently bite off more than I can chew – how do I quantify my level of load?

I’ve identified a number of leading indicators that I can use to check that I’m on top of a project – indicators that help me identify problems before they occur rather than after. For example, I review and update project risks every day rather than having an unforseen risk cause a project delay.

I put the indicators in a daily checklist – if I can tick off the items on the checklist at the end of each day, then I know I’m on top of the project. And if I can do this for each of the projects that I’m managing, I know I’m not overloaded and can take on more work. Note that the indicator checklist isn’t my daily task list – that’s another story.

My daily leading indicator checklist for each project:

1. I’ve sent a summary of actions or minutes for meetings that I chaired that day.
2. I’ve spoken individually with each member of my team.
3. I’ve spoken with my customer(s).
4. I’ve reviewed project risks and updated the register.
5. I’ve updated the progress/completion of tasks.

When I notice that I can’t complete my checklists each day, I have an early warning and I can do something about it – before my project starts to suffer.

So here’s how you can work out how many projects are too many:

1. Work out what your leading indicators are – keep it simple but cover the essentials.
2. Make a ‘leading indicator’ checklist for each project you’re managing.
3. Check off the list every day.

By using a leading indicator checklist daily, you’ll keep on top of your game, and know where to focus to stay there.

Commuting time is YOUR time – use it wisely

Believe it or not, one of my favourite parts of work is commuting – even though I’m on my way to work, I treat it as ‘my time’, and I refuse to waste it doing work-related activity.

Making the most of commuting

Here are some ways you can use your commuting time:

1. Read. It’s easy to read on public transport (don’t try it in the car), so find something educational, motivating or inspiring. Reading non-fiction in the morning will get your brain going for the day – fiction will help you unwind on the trip home.
2. Write. Write some poetry, a letter or a story – this might be the opportunity to start on that novel you’ve always wanted to write.
3. Learn. I’m learning French on the train – and I’ve found if you practice out loud, you’re guaranteed to get a seat by yourself! Just kidding – I’m doing exercises in the lesson book. If you’re commuting by car then language CD’s are great – you can practice pronunciation too.
4. Listen. Audiobooks are ideal for the car and good on public transport when it’s crowded or you’re too tired to read. You can get them from iTunes, Amazon, Audible and many other places. Some MP3 players let you speed up the playback of Audiobooks which makes them even faster to devour.
5. Communicate. Contact people you want to keep in touch with. In the car, you can make calls using your mobile on hands-free. On the train, you can email or SMS.

Commuting activities to avoid!

1. Playing games on your phone or a game device. These are just time burners, and the last thing you need is less time.
2. Newspapers. Most news is not news – it is irrelevant information that is designed to trigger your fear emotion. You can get up to date on relevant news in a few minutes on the ‘Net now, so use the time more constructively.
3. Work. A lot of people catch up on work while commuting – your personal time is valuable and this amounts to giving it away for nothing.

Restore balance to your life by using your commute time for personal pursuits – you’ll feel like you’re stepping off the treadmill and getting your life back.

How to take action – the key to productivity

Life rewards action, not intention

Think about all the achievements in your life so far, the ones you feel most satisfied with. They don’t need to be grand things, anything that you are satisfied with will do.

Are they things you meant to do, or did you actually do them?

Of course you did them. Achievements are not our intentions – I’ve never seen a statue of a person with the caption ‘Joe Bloggs – he intended to lead the revolution’ – but are a result of actions taken on those intentions. Wealth comes from using your money to make more. Rewarding relationships grow from putting in the effort to keep them on track. Good health comes from exercising and eating right. And self esteem comes from achieving your goals.

Make time/opportunity

It may seem you don’t have the time or opportunity to take action but if you look carefully, you can make changes that will enable you to get more things done. Things like watching less TV, using your commuting time to learn a new language or rescheduling your exercise can work wonders – I found that I would never go to the gym after work, I was just too tired. Since I started running in the morning, it happens every day.

Break it down

Some goals may seem too large to start but if you break them down into actions, reaching them can become much simpler.

Recently I wanted to research investment properties in a new area.

I identified establishing relationships with Real Estate Agents as a key priority. To do that, I needed to phone them up and to do that, I needed to get their phone numbers.

So my first action was ‘Look up all relevant Real Estate Agents in the area in the Yellow Pages, and list names and numbers’. That was an easy five minute task – I collected the numbers and got onto the next task, calling each one of them to discuss what I was looking for. In two easy steps I was well on my way to achieving my goal.

Set a deadline

Having decided on an action, lock in a date and time for when to do it, otherwise it’s just an intention. If it helps, ‘make it public’ by telling someone else when you’ll do it – it’s harder to break a commitment to somebody else than one to yourself.

3 ways to take action

1. Stop intending. Don’t think about it, rationalise it, analyse it, deliberate over it or procrastinate about it – just do it. Develop an action mindset.
2. Make time. Adjust your schedule to make time for your actions and reduce activities that prevent action e.g. TV, Net surfing, drinking/drugs etc.
3. Set actions and when you’ll do them. Identify the next step you need to do, and decide when you will do it. Make it public if it helps you to lock it in.

You will feel much more fulfilled at the end of every day when you can look back over your achievements, and they’ll only happen through action.

Increase productivity with mini-routines

Changing Routines

Have you ever thought “I could so much more done if I didn’t have to work”?

Well, I thought so too but I’ve found that it’s surprisingly difficult to keep productivity up since I finished work.

Work and Routines

I left my job about 2 weeks ago as a strike towards Making Money vs Earning Money, and my intention was to use the time to be super-productive in all those things I thought the job prevented me from doing.

As the final day of work approached, I started to look at my daily routines, and I noticed that a lot were actually driven by work-related factors.

For example, my early morning routine was kept in place by the deadline of catching the 6:50 train. Would I keep this up when I no longer needed to wake up at the same time to catch the train to work?

The Home Extension Project

To complicate matters, my first non-work project is building an extension on my house and I’m finding a number of further factors are sabotaging my established routines.

First, while I’m handy, I’m not a builder so it’s a steep learning curve and it takes a LOT of concentration. I’m spending most of my waking hours thinking about what has to be done, how to do it, the optimal sequence of events etc and this has shifted my focus away from my usual activities that still need to be done.

Second, the work is physically demanding and while this is GREAT for getting a good night’s sleep, there’s less incentive to keep up my usual exercise routine, which included getting up early.

Third, since I’m outside working, I’m away from my usual productivity tools (PC and Action list) which reminded me of my daily tasks.

Without my Action List beside me to jog my memory, I’m not making calls, doing Internet banking etc, that I used to fit in during my work-related activities.

And in preparation for this project I had created a work breakdown structure, complete with buffer activities such as ordering materials ahead of time so they would be here before I needed them. But without access to that via my PC, I’m missing deadlines on some of the
activities and putting the whole project under pressure.

Fourth, I have very little ‘dead time’ – I used to learn French on the train, and keep in touch with friends and relatives from cabs on the way back from meetings. I don’t have that time anymore so those activities aren’t getting done.

I’m pleased with how focused my project time is now but I don’t want to drop activity in other areas of my life.

The New Routine

I’ve realised that productivity is best served by establishing a number of mini-routines in my day – ones that see progress on key actions but fit in with my different circumstances.

To start with, I’m rising early and exercising, even though the day’s work will be quite physical. I’ve then allocated time for writing blog articles immediately after this, so I’ll do a little each day.

And for this week, that’s it – it’s better to focus on reworking my mini-routines one at a time so they can become established.

The Top 3…

So the top 3 ideas I’m acting on this week are:

1. Working out my mini-routines to allow me time to get the important things done
2. Realising that I can only establish one mini-routine at a time, so focusing on just the morning for now
3. Working out how to fit in mini-routines when there’s a change in my daily routine

Here’s a good article on routines: Optimize Your Productivity with Daily, Weekly Routines and here’s a good one on How to become an Early Riser.

The productivity reboot

For the last few weeks, I feel like I’m on a productivity plateau, or maybe even stalled.

I can see things slipping through the cracks, and have a sense of unease that I just haven’t been getting through what I previously was getting through.

I haven’t been feeling as fulfilled at the end of each day.

I realise that I’ve fallen off the wagon.

Hmm. Not good. I’m still doing some good things, like running each morning (that’s a real habit now). I’m still keeping email closed (most of the time) and I’m 2.5 weeks into establishing a brand new habit, which I’m pleased with. But my working day is not feeling like it should.

So I traced this back to where I think it started, and where it started was when I relinquished my tablet PC to someone at work who needed it more, and returned to a desktop PC.

How is this relevant? Well, ALL of my project and action management is kept in a piece of software that I’m writing. It has everything in it. When I switched to the desktop PC, I had to install a second instance on my home PC. The upshot is that I no longer have a single place to organise my tasks. This was the beginning of the productivity leak.

My pocket notepad started to fill up, as I slipped the habit of updating the system and tearing the page out. As a result, actions started to mount up. My paper in-basket was full, and my email Inbox had filled to about 45 items (which I realise isn’t bad compared to many people).

It was back to the GTD fundamentals for me.

1. Get the collection process going again (pocket notepad). Check
2. Process the items into projects and actions. Check
3. Process my email inbox and paper in-basket. Check

These have been the high priority tasks for the last 2 days, and I’m happy to say that I’m feeling better already. Having done these and removed the guilt, I could then prioritise my actions with greater clarity and purpose.

Feeling much better!

I’ve concluded that I agree with David Allen in that it’s easy to fall off the wagon, but it’s easy to get back on again quickly.