5 secrets of effective project management
Fred Krieger, founder and CEO of Scoro, shared in BalticBest 2018 conference his advice how to achieve more with less. Based on his experience, the 5 secrets of effective project management are:
Micromanage right things
Micromanagement (we could also call it “attention to detail”) is actually not bad at all when you micromanage the right things. The key question is of course, what these right things are, but as a general direction to set the right course: do not micromanage people, situations or projects. Do micromanage systems, quality, and training.
Be proactive, not reactive
It is almost always easier to be reactive. The era of digital disruption is also an era of digital interruption - just think about instant messaging, for example. It even might give a satisfying feeling of actually getting more things done for a certain period, but it is deceptive in a long run. Being proactive needs more work but the good news is that we can learn it. Being proactive means anticipating problems instead of firefighting; focusing on what is important instead of ad-hoc action. If reactive ends up with quite a fragmented understanding of how things are, then being proactive gives you a complete overview, the big picture.
Busy does not mean productive
Multitasking is by far less effective than focusing on one clear task. Even worse, it can damage our brains more than smoking weed could. It also quite mercilessly increases burnout rate. Be critical about your company culture - does it encourage or even expect multitasking? If that is the case, then even taking a vacation will not help your employees to avoid burnout, it will give just a temporary relief. Change the system.
Creativity does not equal chaos
It is a common misconception that creative people prefer chaos to a certain amount of order. Have you heard that before: "I am working with some really creative people here. Such routines would just kill their creativity." Based on my experience it is actually vice versa. In reality some boundaries - deadlines, routines, even limitations - have a really good impact on creativity.
Simple does not mean simplistic
Everyone wants things to be simple. But just simple is not good enough, it is often too superficial. The real goal is to be simplistic - to make complex things seem to be really easy.Measure the progress
We are quite good at planning things, there is no doubt about that. Every manager is able to create a project plan or two if necessary. One of the most common mistakes is that the plan is not compared with what is actually happening to evaluate the performance and also improve future planning.
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