How to LEAD your Project's Purpose and People for the Best Outcomes
The purpose of this blog post is to provide an overview of the LEAD domain of the MPM model which includes the Motive and People segments.
LEAD includes the project pieces necessary to lead the project to achieve a specific purpose and ensure it is always moving in that direction; and it also includes leading the people involved with helping to achieve that purpose.
In the MPM model, the LEAD domain includes the Motive and People segments
Project Management is Leading the Project Purpose and People to Achieve a Specific Purpose
We’ve covered something called the Vehicle Purpose project in other blog articles to help illustrated project management principles with a personal project we all most likely will get involved in a some point.
Buying a vehicle is a small, personal project. If you followed the steps to INITIATE your project, you are taking a route that greatly increases your likelihood of project success.
Look at this blog post if you want a refresher on the components of the charter.
Look at this blog post for insights into why a charter has your back.
Just imagine that in a couple of months, you are the proud owner of a new vehicle, having a celebratory drink with your vehicle expert friend who helped you, and you find yourself saying, “that was a very successful little project.”
The daily and weekly habits that you’ll form using the advice from this blog are the key to that future success.
Let’s do a quick review of the MPM model and then jump into the pieces that support the model, and specifically the pieces around the LEAD domain.
MPM Model Quick Review
In our project management MPM model, there are 5 parts:
Step 1: Initiate and Rationalize is noting down key thoughts to ensure you get what you want and you know what “done” looks like before you get started.
Step 2: Prepare and Plan, is a daily or weekly review to ensure strategy and tactics align, or if a change in direction is required.
Step 3: Meet and Execute, is a daily or weekly focus and collaborative brainstorming on what is most critical to get done daily and weekly to stay on track.
Step 4: Publish and Monitor, is a daily, weekly, and even more frequent, process to monitor, assist, and communicate, tasks, outcomes, progress, and challenges.
Step 5: Transition and Close, sets up the outcomes for long term success, and moves resources and activities from a project to operational state.
To support moving through those Steps, you need tools that are composed of pieces that you pull together as appropriate for the tool you are using at that time.
Many of the pieces are developed in an initial form when in Step 1, Initiate and Rationalize and then built on as the project proceeds.
The value of thinking of them as project pieces is that they answer some fundamental questions that need to always be asked when starting something of significance; and this may give you flashbacks to your schooling, but we have to go there.
Six Fundamental Questions You Must Rationalize
Six important research questions need to be asked for any idea or venture; the 5 W’s and How, come-on think back to high school: Who, What, Where, When, Why, and the additional non-W question – How Much.
If we apply this to a Vehicle Purchase project, here are some sample questions we would want to ask during Initiate and Rationalize before committing to buy a car:
- Who is going to help me decide? Who has the time to visit dealerships with me? Who should I tell that I am doing this?
- What kind of vehicle am I getting- a truck or car? An electric vehicle? What features do I want?
- How much am I going to spend? Am I financing or paying cash? Do I have a budget?
- Where am I looking for vehicles? Do I want to browse a website like Craigslist, Kijiji, or AutoTrader? Do I want to visit in-person dealerships? Are there constraints that will affect my options?
- What are my time constraints – am I aiming to find something within a month? Or by next week? Am I casually looking, with no major time pressures, and able to approach this casually?
- Why am I getting a new vehicle now? Is my old one about to die, or am I tired of my current vehicle? Are there any decision factors for choosing a new vehicle that I need to keep in mind?
Think about the 5 Ws and the H
Pieces of the Six Questions
The W and H questions include all the pieces you need when starting and for ongoing management of your project.
Build your foundation by answering W and H questions – Concept Model
Answer these “W” and “H” questions cause you to create the documents you have probably heard about many times in the project management world; and these are all grouped as Pieces to your project under three main categories related to activities you do to Lead, Oversee, and Schedule during the life of your project and they involved the Motive, People, Outcomes, Financials, Map and Timing.
Build the foundation by answering W and H questions – Detailed Model
Project Management Pieces Give Answers to the 6 Questions
Getting into more Project Management detail, we add in the project management Pieces to answer the questions from a project perspective for each one of the labels.
- Why = Motive: purpose, description, assumptions, constraints, risks
- Who = People: roles, team, organization, stakeholders, communications, adoption
- What = Outcomes: objectives, requirements, scope, deliverables, testing, quality, earned value outcomes
- How Much = Financials:CAPEX, OPEX, budget, procurement, earned value financials
- Where = Map (or Path): methodology, approach, earned value progress
- When = Timing: timelines, milestones, schedule
This blog post focuses on LEAD. Read about INITIATE here.
What is in LEAD?
LEAD answers the general questions of “Why?” and “Who?”, which for managing projects are “Motive” and “People”.
“Motive” contains four items, each covered in their own section in this blog post:
1. Purpose
2. Description
3. Assumptions
4. Constraints
5. Risks
“People” has five items, each covered in their own section in this blog post:
1. Roles
2. Team
3. Organization
4. Stakeholders
5. Communications
6. Adoption
A vehicle purchase is a practical example of a project.
Motive
The “motive” in your project answers the question of “why” you are doing the project: your overarching reason and motivation.
The components to Motive help clarify and document that reason. The purpose statement succinctly states the project goal, the description provides support detail, as do the assumptions, which clarify what is expected for the purpose to be achieved, and the risks are potential hurdles to reaching the goal.
“Why” is Your Motive
1. Purpose
The purpose and description are stated in your project charter and once approved by your stakeholders, stays constant. Keep your purpose short: one or two statements at most.
Purpose for Your Vehicle Purchase Project
In your vehicle purchase project that we started in the INITIATE article, the project purpose may be simply to buy a new vehicle to replace your old one because your current one is about to die and that would leave you without a vehicle.
Figuring out what you want to communicate to your stakeholders, and the decisions you will be making yourself, will be key in writing a good Purpose statement.
The purpose statement can be narrow, identifying elements of the solution. It can also be broader, leaving the project to explore a larger set of options early in the project.
There are advantages and disadvantages to both, and each affects the project costs, time and effort in a different way, so the purpose should be chosen carefully. The blog post at this link goes into the narrow versus broad discussion in a little more detail and includes examples for the vehicle purchase project.
Your vehicle purchase project can have a very open or very specific purpose
Weekly Habits for Purpose
Your purpose does not need weekly updates, but you can review it every few weeks if you need a grounding in case the project is struggling to determine the best decision amongst some critical options early on.
A quick review of your project purpose at team meetings helps ensure that you’re only focused on the essential steps to reach your destination, rather than shiny objects you might encounter along the way.
2. Description
The description section contains background that supports the project statement.
If you need to add supplementary Purpose details for your stakeholders, then put that in the Description section.
The Description can also contain a sub-section best titled as Background Information, which provides project context for the stakeholders, letting them see the motivations and rationales that lead to the project.
Description for Your Vehicle Purchase Project
In your vehicle purchase project, you can add the following example points to start your Background section:
Background
- The current vehicle is 10 years old and has 300,000 miles
- Repairs in the last nine months include major, expensive parts, such as the drive train
Weekly Habits for Description
The description should not change after your stakeholders approve it, but review of the Target State description can be helpful to ensure you are achieving the vision that was presented to the stakeholders.
If you do change the purpose or description, your charter will need re-approval or another review by your stakeholders. Get a habit of reviewing the purpose and description for five minutes every other or every third week, to ensure you are on target with what was discussed with your Stakeholders.
3. Assumptions
When you state your project Purpose, you set a destination, and in order to be successful in reaching that destination you have to assume certain things are true.
Assumptions articulate the boundary conditions that are necessary for your project’s success.
Missed Assumptions can lead us into problems later
Stakeholders reviewing your project charter will bring up more assumptions, which can be added to your list to make it more comprehensive.
The assumptions can also assist with understanding risks that can hinder your project success, because anything that affects your assumptions can introduce a risk. We’ll discuss this more in the Risks section.
For steps in managing and updating assumptions and some examples, see this article.
Assumptions for Your Vehicle Purchase Project
Examples of assumptions that can be listed for your vehicle purchase project include:
- The interest rate for financing will be constant over the time period for your vehicle purchase project
- Your credit rating for financing stays constant or goes up, but does not go down
- The models and years you are considering are available at the dealers that are within the preferable radius from your home
Weekly Habits for Assumptions
Assumptions don’t necessarily need a weekly review, unless the project is in the midst of some critical challenges and is reviewing current directions.
Reviewing assumptions takes less than 5 minutes and it can be worth a review every few weeks as part of the review of other charter items such as Purpose and Description.
Assumptions can change and require updating but not necessarily affect the project objectives or purpose. If they do, then a review and re-approval by stakeholders may be necessary.
4. Constraints
Constraints like assumptions also describe boundary conditions for your projects, but whereas assumptions define what you expect to be in place, constraints define what is actually in place as limitations or restrictions within which the project needs to operate.
Examples of constraints could be a fixed budget, available materials, or key resources, or important project milestones.
Constraints for Your Vehicle Purchase Project
Examples of constraints that can be listed for your vehicle purchase project include:
- Your absolute maximum available to spend
- Timing to have it purchased within a particular timeframe if you need it for a trip
- Kind of vehicle, such as requiring something with towing capacity if you plan on using it to pull something
Weekly Habits for Constraints
Constraints don’t necessarily need a weekly review, unless the project is in the midst of some critical challenges and is reviewing current directions.
Reviewing constraints takes just a few minutes maybe every few weeks as part of the review of other charter items such as Purpose and Description, just to make sure you’re keeping them in mind, and none have changed.
Constraints can change and require updating but not necessarily affect the project objectives or purpose. If they do, then a review and re-approval by stakeholders may be necessary.
5. Risks
Risks are potential impediments to achieving your project purpose. They exist because of your project purpose statement.
In other words, by stating a purpose or goal, and the assumptions about what has to be in place to reach that goal, a number of conditions or issues come to mind that could prevent that purpose or goal from being reached. These are your risks.
So, they start out as potential issues and if they are significant enough, they are formulated into risks which have to be monitored or reviewed frequently to see if they are in danger of occurring. If they are in danger of occurring, steps are then followed to mitigate, or reduce or eliminate, the impact of that occurrence.
During INITIATE an initial list of risks is created in the charter. Here is a link to an article that discusses creating risks during INITIATE.
As the project progresses the list of risks is monitored, and some can be removed, or more added. It is a dynamic list that needs a weekly review.
Think of risks as issues, that if they come to fruition, cause problems that have a negative impact, so it is beneficial to identify steps to mitigate them in case they do occur.
Risks can be listed as statements using the formula above. There is more detail about how to do that in this blog article.
Communication is key here because you might need help from your stakeholders to mitigate the risks. Therefore, it is important that they are clearly understood and shared, frequently reviewed, and communicated it becomes more likely that they will occur.
Risks for Your Vehicle Purchase Project
For a project like our vehicle purchase, the risks are most likely personal.
For example, one risk could be stated as:
- If you buy an unreliable vehicle, even under a warranty, it can cause you additional effort in maintenance or return trips to the dealership, and this impacts your personal time, or even your time during the workday.
- To mitigate this, you could purchase ratings services or take the time to research additional vehicle reliability data and discuss with your vehicle expert.
- You could also mitigate this by sticking with particular models that have historically good repair records.
The risk above follows the pattern of Issue (buying an unreliable vehicle), Causes a problem (additional effort in maintenance or return trips to the dealership), that has a negative Impact (reduces personal time or cuts into work time). This is followed by a potential Mitigation strategy.
Weekly Habits for Risks
Risks need a weekly review. If they are listed in order of most critical to least critical, whether you use statements or scoring, or both, should not take more than a 5 to 10-minute review each week.
A few minutes allows time to confirm their probability, severity and mitigation; and time to review any issues to determine if additional risks need to be added.
Managing risks on a weekly basis is covered in this article.
For more detail on developing and phrasing risks see the INITIATE risk article.
People
The “Who” domain for your project includes all things related to “People”.
This includes a description of the roles and what is expected of each, the organizational structure and authority for decision making, identification of those who have the most stake in the project success, how you will communicate with people on the project, and how the stakeholders are going to make changes to their personal habits to adopt the project solution.
The “Who” is your People
1. Roles
Your Roles document is a list of responsibilities per position on the project. Positions are labels given to the collection of responsibilities.
Role examples include: Project Sponsor, Project Manager, Project Support, Project Communications, and Trainer, to name just a few.
For each role, list in bullet form all of the tasks expected of that role. As example, these might be the responsibilities for the Project Sponsor:
Project Role Example
Create this Role Responsibility list prior to adding people’s names. This allows you to create a detailed and complete list of all required responsibilities before you potentially bias your perspective by thinking of the person instead of the role.
Once roles and responsibilities are detailed, then communicate with the project people you’ve assigned roles to and confirm that your descriptions match their expectation of their responsibilities on the project; in other words, confirm that your assumptions are correct.
This can be very illuminating, especially if someone feels uncomfortable in a role you have asked them to be in. It is important to make sure all necessary project responsibilities are covered, though, so that is why it is important to detail the responsibilities before assigning people’s names.
A complete list of responsibilities and then ownership for everything on the list is essential for a successful project.
Roles for Your Vehicle Purchase Project
For our vehicle purchase project, the roles are a smaller list, but as an example of your vehicle expert or advisor:
Vehicle Purchase Project Role Example
Weekly Habits for Roles
Roles and responsibilities do not change on a weekly basis, so they do not need a weekly review.
It is worth a 3-minute review each month to ensure all stated responsibilities are being done. Sometimes it can be surprising to see details that have been forgotten or even who is supposed to be doing what.
If the responsibilities change, these can be shifted around with agreement from those affected, and a review and re-approval with stakeholders is not necessary because as long as the responsibility is being covered by someone with an appropriate skill level, the impact to the project is minimal.
2. Team
We call the people directly involved in executing your project the “team”, because you’re going to be working closely together on a daily basis to complete the project deliverables.
In INITIATE and RATIONALIZE you clarify the roles and responsibilities expected of the team members and document those in the charter. You may not know the names of the team members, in fact often you don’t, but that is where it is so important to have an accurate definition of the expectation of each team member role.
You’ll be working daily with the team
It is important to clarify the role you expect the team members to play, where they fit in the decision making in the team in regards to their responsibilities and how much of their time you expect for the project.
Throughout the project as you spend focussed time as part of your project to review the pieces in LEAD, make sure you are carving out 1 on 1 time with some of your key team members to ensure their expectations are being met.
Work on your communications within the team to create a level of trust and comradeship so you can build a high performing team.
Team Members in Your Vehicle Purchase Project
In the vehicle purchase project example, your vehicle expert or advisor is a key team member. At the outset they want to know your expectations for their involvement, including how soon and how much of their time you think you’ll need.
Before you start your vehicle purchase project you should discuss the purpose, assumptions and risks with them, so that any expectations you each have are in alignment.
How you engage with team members is so critical for the success of your project, and if you didn’t refer to the link above some tips on communications are covered in that link.
Weekly Habits in regard to Team Members
Team members are engaged on a daily basis. These are the people who play the most important roles in the success of your project.
Early in the week spend a few minutes thinking about each of your key team members and review expectations and any communications improvements with them that may be required.
For your team members, you should have a weekly, probably 1-hour, status meeting to discuss deliverable and task progress and review the overall schedule.
Your 30-minute review is also the time to note any follow-up needed with any of your project team in preparation for the weekly project team meeting.
3. Organization
The Organization identifies, in an org chart-type of view the decision-making authority within the project.
Project Organization identifies decision-making authority
Decision-making authority includes who gives the final approval for outcomes and financials, who is helping with communications, who is consulted rather than being more directly involved, and if there is a steering committee, how they fit in.
Projects use resources in an organization, usually scarce resources, to produce an outcome of value. However, there are always questions raised at the executive and other levels challenging the best use of scarce resources and the best allocation of those resources. A good project organization chart ensures the transparency and oversight that is needed.
Organization for Your Vehicle Purchase Project
In the vehicle purchase project, if you and your vehicle advisor friend are the core team, then you are the steering committee, so that together you make the critical decisions and any changes and approve of milestone completions.
If you have several friends helping you, you may formally or informally identify that one of those friends is going to be the one who makes the final decision for you. You have just inadvertently created an organization structure for your vehicle purchase.
The final decision may simply fall to you, as the person who is also playing the role of sponsor, or if you have a partner or spouse who you share bank accounts with, they may need to be convinced of your decision.
Weekly Habits for Organization
The Organization should not have a weekly variance and so does not need a weekly review.
You can change the Organization if necessary, but you will need a review or re-approval from the Steering Committee. As well, members of the Steering Committee can change, though it is usually made out of a core set of key stakeholders and remains fairly constant.
You can review the structure from the Charter every couple of months very briefly to ensure consistency, but it is not something that typically experiences a lot of change.
4. Stakeholders
We call the people involved in your project “stakeholders”, because they have a stake in how it turns out.
A stakeholder is anyone who is directly or indirectly affected by the outcomes of the project.
Internal Stakeholders include those inside your organization such as your project team, other managers, your manager and the executive chain above you.
External Stakeholders are those outside your organization such as regulatory bodies, suppliers, business partners, or customers.
In INITIATE and RATIONALIZE you clarify expectations of your stakeholders and document those in the charter.
Clarify expectations for your stakeholders
It is important to clarify the role you expect stakeholders to play, where they fit in the project organization, how much of their time you expect, how you communicate with them, and to also record what they expect of you and your project.
Key stakeholders are those who are usually internal and of special interest to you because they are usually individuals who are very supportive and want to ensure the project succeeds no matter what – this blog post discusses them.
Throughout the project as you spend focussed time in LEAD, keep close relations with your stakeholders and ensure their expectations are being met.
Expectations can change, as for example with a new regulation that impacts your project, and your stakeholders can help you through those changes.
Stakeholders can be internal and external
Working with Stakeholders and more detailed descriptions of Stakeholders are covered in this blog post.
Stakeholders in Your Vehicle Purchase Project
In the vehicle purchase project example, those who might help provide funds, or who might be also using the vehicle are key stakeholders. At the outset they want to know your expectations for their involvement, including how soon and how much of their time you think you’ll need.
Before you start your vehicle purchase project you should discuss the purpose, assumptions and risks with them, so that any expectations you each have are in alignment.
In your vehicle purchase project, you may have other stakeholders as well, including some who you just inform of your decision.
Your stakeholders can be engaged in several different ways. They could just be informed, or accountable for specific decisions or outcomes, or responsible to assist with the decision making, or even just consulted when a decision is being made.
How you engage with stakeholders for you project needs to be clarified up front so you both have the same expectations. For more details on the different ways you could engage with your stakeholders and how to document this during INITIATE see this blog post.
Weekly Habits in regard to Stakeholders
Stakeholders are most often engaged with on a weekly basis. It would switch to more frequent if there were issues encountered for which you needed their advice.
Early in the week spend 10 minutes going through your list of stakeholders and review expectations and required communications.
For external stakeholders review any expectations due in the upcoming week and add to your to-do list any personal, specific communications, referring to your communications plan, covered in the next section of this blog post, for your directions.
For internal stakeholders, identify any necessary meetings or communications to review expectations. It is a good idea to set up a recurring 15 to 30-minute touch point with your project Champion or Sponsor to discuss status and any concerns or information they need from you regarding the project that will assist them in their weekly responsibilities.
Your 30-minute review is also the time to note any follow-up needed with any of your stakeholders in preparation for upcoming stakeholder meetings.
5. Communications
Communications covers status reporting, presentations, status meetings, and updating both internal and external stakeholders.
Project Communications are essential, but can take time
Communications can involve quite a bit of time for the project manager.
It is helpful to create a communications plan that details periodic communications and communications that occur in the case of a project event.
Examples of periodic communications are covered in the blog post at this link.
A more detailed explanation of a Communications Plan is covered in this blog post.
Communications also covers the critical weekly team meeting and how you communicate with your team. With the project team it is critical to create excitement, personal ownership, and urgency for completing intermediate milestones and weekly tasks.
A key factor in the team’s results is in the language you use. There are a number of SPMS blog posts which cover that, because it is so critical and has one of the greatest impacts on your project. A couple of them are linked below:
1 Tip on How to Use Words for a Safe Environment
1 Strong Way to Ignite Productive Brainstorming
Others can be found by going to the Simple PM Strategies site Learning Hub and selecting “Leading the Team” and click on the Tag for Communications to find others.
Communications for Your Vehicle Purchase Project
In your vehicle purchase project if we have a role of Vehicle Expert and we add an additional role of Interested Parent we could create a communications plan that looks something like the following, organized by Role.
Communications Plan for Vehicle Purchase Project Example
Weekly Habits for Communications
Create a communications plan. Review that plan for 20 minutes early in the week and confirm the repeating schedule you have created for communications throughout the week.
In that 20 minutes identify any anomalies or special communications required over and above the normal pattern based on any project events that have occurred.
Note any special communications needed with individual project team members, especially a personal email or scheduling a few minutes to speak with them one-on-one.
Your Project Management communications are critical enough that a 20-minute weekly review is necessary at the start of the week.
Throughout the week time will be taken by Status Meetings and creating and sending Status Reports. A substantial amount of time can be saved by repurposing items for Status Meetings and Status Reports, and how to do this is covered in the workshops and reviewed in an upcoming blog post.
6. Adoption
Projects introduce change. Change affects people personally by altering their daily and weekly routines to adopt new ways of operating. Projects change how business operates.
One of the key responsibilities of the project manager is to ensure that those affected by the change successfully adopt the new way of operating into their existing habits and routines.
In LEAD, the change we are covering is the change that affects people as a result of what the project implements, and how to minimize any negative impact on productivity that comes when something new is introduced into people’s usual routines and ways of operating. It is successful when people adopt the new way of operating, so we call the LEAD change “Adoption”.
Adoption of change is moving people from the current state of productivity to a future state of productivity.
The above diagram is explained in a blog post on managing change.
The bottom-line regarding Adoption is that the project team needs to understand how personal routines and ways of doing things may be different after the project. They will need to create ways of helping people shift from the old way to the new way, so that all staff successfully adopt the new way of working.
Adoption for Your Vehicle Purchase Project
In the vehicle purchase project Adoption can include, depending on the vehicle purchased:
- Training on new vehicle options: Schedule a 1-hour timeslot for three different evenings within the first week of ownership to go over options and locations
- Training on new vehicle maintenance: Schedule a 2-hour timeslot on a Saturday to practice changing the tire on the new vehicle.
- If an electric vehicle, arrange for the installation of a charging port in your garage one week prior to taking ownership of the vehicle.
- If an electric vehicle, allocate three hours one night one week prior to ownership, to determine how to get to available charging stations and do some conceptual route planning based on current driving geography.
These are some starting ideas, but it illustrates that projects introduce changes to our existing ways of operating and they do so at a personal level. Therefore to create the most effective training for the most successful Adoption, the analysis and material must be at a personal level.
Weekly Habits for Adoption
Adoption of new ways of working for your end customer is material that is developed and training that is provided later in the project, with the timing close to when there are no more changes to the end product, and just before people have to use the new solution, so they don’t forget between when they take the training and when they use the new solution.
Adoption is also further up in the project, developing what the end customer currently does and what the new solution changes, so the change can be understood, minimized, and material for training developed early on, but that is covered in another blog post.
At this time we are going to constrain Adoption to be just the tasks related to developing the training materials for the end customer to use and taking them through that training.
This scope of Adoption does not involve weekly activities until near the end of the project. At that time, it could involve several days per week from the project manager developing and administering the training.
If the manager has someone in the role helping with this, then the manger’s time on Adoption on a weekly basis near the end of the project is defining the scope of what needs to be in the training, timing of the training and review and approval of the material used for training.
Summary
LEAD project items under Motive are about steering the project through the assumptions and risks to ensure that it achieves its stated purpose. Once the purpose is defined, weekly activities under Motive mainly involve tracking, managing and communicating risks.
LEAD project items under People involve one of the greatest time commitments and personal challenges for the manager managing the project.
Ensuring stakeholders are engaged and expectations are understood and met requires skill in packaging the project information into simple but relevant high-level messages, succinct that it can be understood, and support can be garnered where needed, but not so detailed that attention is lost.
Ensuring stakeholders who are project team members are engaged is presenting the project information in a different way. The messaging must be collaborative and create urgency to get tasks and deliverables done week to week. Communication has to be detailed enough to ask probing questions to resolve underlying issues that need to be discovered.
LEAD involves Communicating with all Stakeholders both Internal and External in a way that provides just the right amount of messaging at the right time for the right event.
LEAD also requires ensure the end customer of the project outcome successfully Adopts the new solution and integrates it into their daily habits and routines, creating new ways of operating.
LEAD can absorb a significant amount of the manager’s time each week, so re-purposing and re-use of material in an organized and deliberate way needs to be developed to get the most done in the least amount of time.
Action Steps / Apply This Knowledge
Create review time in the early part of the week for the following weekly LEAD activities:
- Review Risks – Use the time suggested. Read them over and ensure nothing is appearing on the horizon. Create a routine to add them to the status report draft for the week if there is a risk of them materializing.
- Stakeholders – Use the time suggested. Set up a sponsor/champion recurring call / meeting. Set up a team recurring call / meeting.
- Communications – Use the time suggested. Review what communications have to go out and when in the next reporting period to both internal and external stakeholders and at those to your task list.
- The key to saving time and being effective with communications is re-purposing and re-using content. Create templates and repeatable steps for all status reporting and meetings. Design it to use the content from a single source and copy and drop that into your templates.
- Prompt engineering guidance for AI GPTs such as chatGPT: “I’m a business leader managing a project whose purpose is Y, and delivering X. What are some important considerations I need to think about when defining the reason or motive for the project, its description and any assumptions, constraints, and risks. Then when explaining and presenting the project and its purpose to the people who will be involved such as stakeholders and team members, what are some of the project organizational and communication related aspects that I need to keep top of mind?”
Learn More to Do More
Business evolves through change initiatives otherwise known as projects. The key to managing these change initiatives so you have more time, and less stress is to use simple strategies and tools.
Check out the Learning Hub’s other Articles with Actionable Steps, organized with a busy leader in mind, by topic or main idea, and with some AI GPT (e.g. ChatGPT) prompt engineering suggestions under the Action steps: https://simplepmstrategies.com/learning-hub-index
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