“Excellence without effort is as futile as progress without preparation.” William Arthur Ward
“In every day, there are 1,440 minutes. That means we have 1,440 daily opportunities to make a positive impact.” Les Brown
Prepare to Prepare
In my 10+ years of managing projects, I’ve learned to carve out preparation time everyday. It’s part of how I work. Without these techniques and “preparing to prepare” it’s inevitable that I end up being reactive to most events, which leads to a hard-to-break spiral of reaction after reaction.
In this post, I’ll share four different techniques I’ve used to make preparation a priority. Being prepared and organized is the key to managing the competing priorities, bandwidth constraints, and the plain ol’ unforeseen roadblocks.
How I start my day – my first 30 minutes
In making sure that I am prepared to lead my teams. I take the first 30 minutes of every day to catch up on emails and to create a daily “To-Do” list that I build from the previous day’s “To-Do” list and add to it throughout the day as soon as action items arise. I learned long ago that it is not a good idea to rely on memory, at least not mine. It may be hours or even days before I think of it again. By having a place to quickly jot down all items that need to be revisited, it removes the anxiety of having to remember and allows me to simply have the freedom to move on to my next meeting or task, knowing it won’t be forgotten. (I use Microsoft OneNote for this, but more about that later.)
Meeting Prep
I’m a firm believer that we should all come to meetings prepared to provide input and to actively participate in the discussion. If I own the meeting, then I make sure that all of my meeting invites are accompanied with agendas. But I also make sure that I know how far ahead participants need to prepare. Materials and agenda go out accordingly.
This is why my “To Do” list is so important. I assess my calendar at the beginning of each day, and based on what meetings I have, I update my “To-Do” list with what meetings I need to prep for. The worst feeling for a budget conscious PM is to have a group of highly compensated individuals in a meeting and not being sure what the objective is. Total waste of time and money.
Prepping for the Client
Clients deserve to be updated in a manner which is optimal for them to digest relevant information, which most of the time requires action on their part. When a project is kicked off and/or a new client partners with Numeric, we have an opportunity to ask questions as to what information is important to them and what their preferences are – do they prefer more visual reports or a concise bulleted list highlighting status, dates, risks, and issues.
Armed with this information, I’m able to prepare for my client-facing meetings having anticipated their needs and next questions. This takes time and will develop more as the partnership develops and grows, however is a key element in ensuring client satisfaction and the most efficient use of our short time together each week.
Organizing with OneNote
Microsoft’s OneNote is a note-taking software that allows you to organize your notes via Notebooks. It syncs your data and makes it available on all of your connected devices while allowing for teams to work in a collaborative workspace. There are multiple sync settings you have control of to decide just how much data you’d like OneNote to consume. You have the option to sync one, all or multiple notebooks on other devices and the option to sync to your mobile device. Bottom line – you are in control of how, when, and where you access your notes – in my case, 24/7.
Having meetings and tasks that repeat weekly for the each of my clients/projects, there are many times when I need to be able to easily access the notes from last week’s status meeting. Due to my organization of notes, I am able to do so with ease. I create a header folder for each of my clients/projects with multiple sub folders to house project related information. From there, I will add a page within each tab for the current week so that it’s a matter of a simple click to get to last week’s or even last month’s notes. Organizing myself with OneNote allows me to find information faster, easily collaborate + share information with team members while operating in a less stressful state of mind. This is not a paid advertisement, simply a tool that allows me to seamlessly prep and execute as needed.
Note: The latest feature that I’ve discovered is the ability to complete simple math equations within OneNote. For instance, just type in “25/5=” without the quotation marks and OneNote will compute the answer. COOL, right?!
How I End My Day
With the number of meetings and shifting priorities presented throughout the day, I make sure to take a moment of preparation at the end of the day as this is just as important as the beginning of the day. This is necessary to assess what has been completed versus what needed to be completed. Thanks to my handy “To-Do” list, I’m able to easily make this assessment and begin preparing for tomorrow, which soon will be more important than today.
Further Reading
The Agile+Analytics Project Manager
Project Management in the Analytics Workspace
The Agile+Analytics Project Manager: Calendars Aren’t Just for Meetings
PMO: Grace Under Pressure – Managing the Chaos
