These daily excerpts from Randy Kay's book Daily Keys to Success will show you how to grow your potential while expanding your personal success to lead a life of significance. You will benefit from 365 topics with ideas, tools, and tactics for living life fully.
You’ve just inherited a project that a mere mortal would appear unable to complete. You’re neither Superman nor Superwoman, but you don’t need to be—you can manage it quite well without any superpowers. How do you accomplish this Herculean task, you ask?
The key is to break it into smaller chunks that can be managed more effectively. You first define clearly what you are delivering. You then need to break these deliverables into manageable pieces, to make it simpler and clearer. For example, if you’re remodeling a house, break down the different project tasks into categories such as kitchen, flooring, electrical and plumbing, and so forth. After doing this, prioritize each of the subtasks. For example, before adding kitchen utilities, you will need to tear out the existing flooring and repaint the walls before laying the new flooring.
If you’re involved in a collaborative project at work, assign team members to each subtask and create timelines and expectations based on your deliverables. In order to ensure that everyone is contributing to the larger project outcome, show each member the final plans and what the end result should look like. As the project manager overseeing a team of people, you need to make sure that you don’t become overwhelmed with competing deadlines, so alternate target dates. If that’s not possible, allocate time for reviewing the project details and for possible delays. The key functionality you need is to construct a hierarchy of all deliverables, which is called a “work breakdown structure.” For example, if you are working on a project to upgrade technologies, establish reviews with each subproject team so that you can orchestrate the blending of each one’s progress with the others. Ask them how, who, when, and where things will be done by drilling down to the most fundamental parts of the work breakdown structure, called “work packages.” Each subproject team should be clear on what the outcome looks like when it is done in delivering their respective work packages. Always keep the subproject teams focused on the central outcome, as in how does this fit with the desired big picture. When all of the deliverables are complete and the outcome meets with your pre-defined requirements, you’ve accomplished what may have seemed impossible. Congratulations!
“After two weeks of working on a project, you know whether it will work or not.” ~ Bill Budge