Frist of all I’d like to state the obvious:
If you want to even remotely complete any project in a reasonable time frame for reasonable costs, you have to lead the project and the team and not just manage it.
1. Less is more
No matter if documentation, meetings, status updates, action items, or even team members.
80% of results will come from 20% of your efforts and 80% of progress will come from 20% of the contributors. There is always potential for cutting things away.
2. Purposeful meetings
The main purpose of any meeting should be connection, collaboration or co-creation. And every meeting without a clear decision is just another coffee break. Don’t use project meetings for mere status updates, action items and time plan reviews.
3. Talk less & share responsibilities
Listen more and talk less, if all your project meetings are one-man shows, where you do the presenting, note taking, moderation an decision making, let me tell you, you are doing it wrong. Don’t be lethargic but encourage and enable the team to move forward on their own. Some teams / colleague will need more guidance, some will want more autonomy balance it from individual to individual.
4. Clear & concise communication
Make all you communication clear, and crisp. Use less and better words to convey your message and be poignant. A C-suit executive won’t read much more than 2-3 short bullets, not because he’s not interested, he just won’t have the time.
5. High level time planning is sufficient
Don’t overcomplicate stuff, have less & bigger work packages, less bars in the Gantt. The plan will not stand the test of time. Think of major milestones and timing, not of granular efforts & interdependencies. Your team will know what to do and when, help them close tasks timely and lead discussions & decision taking.
6. Don’t be cheap with recognition
Be authentic and benevolent when it comes to recognition. Figure out if the person wants to be praised in a 1on1 setting or in front of the team. Always praise your team members in front of their managers, even if they just do the bare minimum. As long as they are contribution and not actively hurting your project, tell they are doing an outstanding job. Build trust with your team.
7. Always improve
Try looking at your project and the companies project work in general with an outside perspective. Streamline what you are doing, cut away what seems to be against common sense, redundant or excess. If the decision of minimizing was wrong you can always add back in. But in general first look what can be omitted.
8. Get a course, watch a YouTube video on presenting
All you job is communication, learn to engage your audience, be it your team, or stakeholders or customers, don’t just read your slides out aloud. Have less and more meaning full content on the slides, have less slides, you should be able to talk 5-7 minutes per slide at least.
9. Risk “management” and mitigations
Risks are neither qualifiable nor avoidable in general. The occurrence of potential risks can not really be derived from past experience and brainstorming alone, it is to a large degree volatile and random in nature. So focus on taking baby steps with decisions and course correct as long as the costs are low.
10. Clear roles, responsibilities & expected performance
Set the expectations early in a written document together with everybody involved. Hold you team accountable and lead with good example. But don’t tolerate slack. The overall performance will be based on what you tolerate, not what example you set (to a degree of course, you can’t slack off either).
11. It’s all about relationships
The perception and success of your project is directly tied to the relationships you built, not only with your team, but with their managers, the projects stakeholders, your manager & PMO colleagues. Do good and talk about it, embellish it to a degree.
Sebastian Strobl 