From freestyling to strategic performing at work
Within standard, ordinary processes, events drive actions. Within a Project Management approach, it is actions driving events. Which practice would you like for your company?
Although we do it daily, multitasking is never easy. Nevertheless, it can all be reduced to a choice: either your busy life can rule you or you can take control.
That choice is no one else’s but yours.
A typical Monday morning: 9 AM, I switch on the telephone and check my email. Not too bad, only 15 to respond urgently and some phone calls to make. I look at my colleague and discuss the first out of 5 strategic tasks to do.
After 5 minutes the phone rings and the easygoing Monday turns hectic. We are on the right track!
What does the right track really mean, you may wonder, when suddenly it seems like everyone needs you at the same moment?!
As if destiny is playing with you, we just go with the flow and see what we can do.
As human beings we all tend to respond to external circumstances once they occur. We react spontaneously, re-setting, re-arranging and re-solving things, events and problems. We only do this, however, after these things have taken place, performed their show and produced their consequences.
And, unequivocally, we do this on a regular basis: not only when aiming at a goal or a performance.
This is when a Project Management approach becomes the strategic method to master variables towards an outcome, the goal, and where many people, the team, play their part in accomplishing it. In simple words, it is all about planning a detailed strategy before putting actions in place.
Not an exact, absolute science but an aim-focused global vision: PM approaches the intended outcome as the desired goal. That goal is the result of an integral combination of phases, inputs and contributions, like proper ingredients for the perfect cake, supplied within a specific time, at specific costs and under specific requirements by each designated member of the involved team.
The backbone of PM is a method that consists of 5 phases: initiation, planning, execution, monitoring and project close. Planning plays the central role throughout the full project chain.
Project Management in a nutshell?
Let’s approach it as conducting an orchestra and you, the Project Manager, are both the composer and the conductor. You create the melody (initiation), outline the symphony and translate the melody into concrete notes (planning). You then put all the ingredients, the instruments, together (execution) and arrange the musical harmony (monitoring). Finally, you set the rhythm and conduct the concert (project close). If all goes well, the audience (your client) will give you a satisfying applause.
To be continued in our next blog!
