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

How many projects are too many?

Getting the jump on your day – identifying your key activities

To do more, you have to do less

Play the Project Management Game

If you treated your project management like a professional sports person treats their sport, how would your perspectives change?

You take it seriously but you don’t take it to heart

You strive to do your best; to push yourself to do better than you did yesterday. If you hit a setback, you don’t stress about it all night; you dust yourself off and prepare for the next game.

A new day, a new game

Each day is a new game. You know you can’t change the game you played yesterday, but you can play today’s game to the best of your ability.

You work on your game

You continually look for ways to improve your game. You work with your coach to build skills and techniques to make you a champion. Every single day you review what worked for you and what didn’t.

You have fun playing the game

You know it’s a GAME and it’s meant to be fun. You also know this doesn’t mean less work but you put effort in to make it fun because you know you win most often when you’re enjoying yourself.

 

So treat your project management like a game, and yourself as a professional player. It puts you in a great frame of mind and you’ll enjoy the challenges even more.

Play hard and have fun!

Upcoming Pongal

Thai Pongal is a harvest festival equivalent to a thanks giving event celebrated by Tamils/Teugus across the world. Pongal in Tamil means “boiling over or spill over.” The act of boiling over of milk in the clay pot is considered to denote future prosperity for the family.

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.

Related Posts

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.

Are you earning money or making money?

It’s just after dawn in mid winter and I’m out for an early morning run. The cold air bites at my face as I chug up the long, gentle grade to the local shopping strip.

Most shops are in darkness, with the exception of the newsagent and the bakery. As I pass the bakery I wash through the warm air that billows from the doorway. The air is thick with that comforting, doughy smell of freshly baked bread, cakes and donuts. Mmm.

I realise that the baker has probably been at work since about 2am and I think to myself, what strange hours to work. It would be a hard way to earn a living. Or to ‘make a living’. Which term is the correct one - they mean the same thing, don’t they?

I start to think about what the difference is. The staff in the bakery work their eight hours and get a wage – that’s earning money.
The baker owns the business, so he/she gets the takings after the expenses are paid – that’s making money. So there’s no direct correlation here between working time and the money that results from that effort – if the baker has a really good day (if he keeps pumping out those delicious smells, today will be one of those) he will make a lot of money but the staff will still earn the same. If business is slow, the baker will make less – but the staff earn the same. So making money seems to be dependent on many more factors that earning money – in this case the weather, customer numbers, competition etc. could all have an influence.

Now I don’t know how much profit there is on a loaf of bread, but I expect that it’s pretty high. This guy seems to be doing the right things – he sells drinks as well and has a coffee machine to catch the early morning railway trade. So he’s making money on all those extra items as well, and he’s still working the same hours. In fact, there are probably all kinds of additional, low cost items that he could up-sell to increase his income if he was creative.

Hmm, there’s an interesting idea – if he was creative… Maybe making money is more about creativity than time?

I’m now at the other end of the shopping strip, near the medical centre. The doctors who work here are employed by the medical centre so they’re earning money. The centre handles the fees (including the government and health fund money), the insurances and the rent but by the size of the waiting room, they do a roaring trade. The owners of the medical centre are making money. Probably serious money.

A block further on I come to the local used car yard. Not a lot of cars, probably just the owner who works here most of the time. How many cars would he sell in a day? Less than one I suspect – who knows? One thing is for sure: this guy makes money. He makes it using his persuasive skills, his buying skills and his knowledge of the market. He could stand there all day but doesn’t make a dollar until he sells a car. It’s not about time on the block for him.

So maybe making money is not about creativity, it’s about applying skills. Maybe it’s a bit of both?

I start to wonder whether I earn money or make money. I have a day job, so I earn money. But I also have some investments that produce income without me spending time on them, although it took creativity and acquired skills to set them up. So I’m making money as well. Bingo! However, right now I’m earning a lot more than I’m making, and I can’t stop working until I’m making enough to live on

I’m away from the shops and skirting the edge of the cemetery now. It’s peaceful - the sun is rising and there is a bit of a mist across the lawns. I wonder how many of the residents were money earners, and how many were money makers? I do a mental calculation and work out that if I retire at 65 and live till I’m 85, more than half of my remaining life will be spent working. Eeek! And in that last 20 years when I get the time to do the things I want to do, I probably won’t be able to! Mortality is sobering.

The cemetery is behind me now and I’m picking up pace as I turn downhill towards home. My mind is racing too, trying to work out how I can turn the tables and boost my money making ability. Creativity and skills. What habits can I acquire? Can I be creative and increase my money-making skills every day? How could I do that? Are there any bad habits that I have that are holding me back, like wasting money on credit card interest or poor spending habits? Can I gain some habits that will help
me save more money to invest?

This making money idea is a powerful, powerful one for me. And the best thing about it is that wage earners are in a unique position to take advantage of it.

Think about the baker. For him, it’s all on the line. If he has a really bad day, he loses money. At least he has the bread I suppose – it would be even harder for the car salesman. I suspect most days are losers with the few days he sells something making up for it. He must have nerves of steel.

But for us money earners, we’ve got a safety net to protect us while we learn how to apply our creativity and build our money making skills.

The curse of a safety net is that you can get caught in it. Many people never make any money at all – once they stop earning their lifestyles decline. It’s such a shame.

The sun is up now, and I feel it on my back as I coast down my street towards home. I feel like I’ve seen the light about earning and making money – earning money is the opportunity to make money. It is a means to an end, not an end in itself.

Now to start working on those money making habits…

Getting the jump on your day – identifying your key activities

If you’ve been trying to get yourself organised, you will probably have accumulated a massive list of things that you want to get done.

It then seems natural to focus on working through these lists, on cranking widgets, on getting things done.

Some days, you can make huge progress by knocking a lot of things off that list, and at the end of the day you feel a great sense of achievement.

Some days though, I knock a lot of things off the list – but I don’t get the sense of achievement. Or at least my sense of achievement feels hollow.

When I really think about it, on such days I don’t feel like I’ve made any progress on the things that really count.

It’s great to get a report written, or a bunch of emails sent, or complete an assignment. But did I really move myself closer to say, financial independence, improved health and vitality, or some other big picture objective?

Am I measuring my achievement on the right scale?

This got me to thinking about what is really important.

When I get to the end of my life, am I likely to look back with pride on all the proposals I wrote, or will I feel more fulfilled remembering the quality time spent with my family, or travelling the world, or helping those less fortunate than me?

So I thought that I would start by identifying the key areas that I think are important. I’ve identified four, but I’ve seen others identify more. Mine are:

Health	I figure that in the long run, you don’t maximise your potential unless you are in pretty good health. For me, good health underpins all other areas. I want to do something every day that improves my health.
Wisdom	Life is about lessons, and lessons are about wisdom. So I want to do something every day that improves my wisdom. I include certain types of knowledge, philosophy, meditation and compassion in this category.
Wealth	Like health, your ability to live a fulfilling life is at least somewhat dependent on money. So I want to ensure that I do something every day that contributes to my wealth. I don’t include work/career in this category. Some people give it its own separate category. I don’t.
Hearth	This is my word for family, friends & relationships. A rich life is a shared life, so I want to do something every day that improves my relationships.

 

I have a week-to-the-page diary, and I started by ruling it into 4 columns as described above. I established the habit of updating it each night with the specific activities that I managed to complete in each category. In the wealth category, I decided to EXCLUDE employment or career related activities – I only record activities that lead to passive income.

Tracking this for a few weeks, I noticed that I was doing pretty well in the health category (see Best Productivity Habit of 2007). I have been learning French for the last few months, and I have either been doing CD’s in the car on the way to work, or working through a lesson book on the train. This has been pretty consistent.

However, the alarming thing I noticed was how rarely I really did something wealth-building, and even worse, how rarely I phoned/spoke with a relative or a friend (I don’t count email).

It’s great to look back over a month and see that I’ve run a few miles every day, but it’s shocking to realise that I’ve spoken to family and friends only a handful of times in the month! All of these categories – Health, Wisdom, Wealth and Hearth are cumulative – they need constant attention or they wither.

So the most important thing for me has to get a tick in each box every day. All the other ‘actions’ on my task lists are really quite petty compared to these, although I confess it’s so easy to get distracted and think it’s all about the task list (especially the work task list).

I’ve found it’s a lot easier to identify a single action in each category at the start of each day – or better still – identify an action that I can turn into a habit.

Four completed actions makes it a successful day from my perspective, and I feel a much greater sense of achievement with those four actions completed than twenty inconsequential work-related actions.

It’s all about priority.