Journeyman Project Manager » psychology

The Key Method to Prioritizing Efficiently

Bert — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 23:52:05 +0000

Chances are high that you and your team have a lot of things to do at the moment and a long list of tasks is currently on your plates.
There’s a cool way to find out what’s the smartest thing to do first by putting each task in one of 4 group in terms of saving time.

Have a look at my sketch drawing in the picture …

important things that are urgent
important things that are less urgent, but not less important
not so very important things that are urgent
unimportant things that aren’t urgent

You can put everything you have to do in one of those 4 groups. Groups 1 and 4 are the obvious ones, do stuff in 1 now, never do anything that gets into 4, easy. But the things in groups 2 and 3 could trick you in wasting your time if you don’t pay attention.

This isn’t rocket science, you already know this but I think it’s a good way to visualize the choices you have to make.

It takes discipline and courage at times to focus on the tasks you put in group 2, but often they are the ones that help you grow out of hard situations. Stuff that goes into group 2 for a PM for instance could be making a detailed planning or a strong risk log, or something strategical like writing out a new process and presenting it to your own project office or to your executives.

Have a good look at what your project teams are doing, it’s the job of a PM to indicate the urgency and the importance of different things for them but also to help them make the correct assessment and maybe the drawing can help you with that when things get fuzzy (like they do).

I got a lot of things like this explained to me in far greater detail by Inge De Bruyn from De Groeipraktijk and use the advice quite a lot, they do training workshops and seminars on all kind of soft skills. This post isn’t endorse by them but I’d recommend them to you if you’d ask me.

How to Deal With Angry People

Bert — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 22:06:42 +0000

One of the things you just come by when you work with people are angry people. It’s normal, people get mad about things at times.

There’s no sense starting an argument against a

wall of emotions.

Arguing just doesn’t work at that moment. It’s easy at times to go into offensive mode yourself before the storm goes down, just don’t. If someone is very very mad about something they almost certainly didn’t chose to feel like that.

Here are a few thing to remember that will help you to stay calm yourself:

Everybody has the right to their emotions, even the angry person in front of you.
Get yourself some time and give the angry person time, wait until the anger fades, only then a real discussion is possible.
The more compassionate you are toward an angry person the higher the chances are on a positive outcome for you if there’s a discussion.
It is always possible to be compassionate without yielding to an argument by confirming that it is an argument.
Venting anger doesn’t relieve it.

OK, I just got angry myself, now what?

Apologize for the angry moment, explain how you felt.
Realize it’s a matter of emotional discipline, learn from it.
It’s a natural thing, don’t be too ashamed.

Same advice goes for people who go into drama mode or start to cry. Having a strong emotion is not a choice. Deal with it in the best way you can.

How to Bring Bad News

Bert — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 23:59:45 +0000

Here are a few things I learned:

When some bad news for your team stresses you out or makes you angry for some reason, take care not to contaminate other people on the project. Take some time to cool down before you bring the message. Keep things objective and focused when you do.
If you need to get a higher sense of urgency in a team, emphasize goals, values and time constraints. Hard situations always have an optimal directions to steer things into, never panic.
If a stakeholder (any kind) screws up badly, it’s still a stakeholder who most probably wants the best for the project. When you talk about this in your team, play the ball, not the player.

A mood is a contagious thing, when you see happy people you tend to feel happier, everybody does, it’s the way our human brains work. In that light you as a project manager are regarded as a kind of mood barometer of a project because you are supposed to have the most parameters to be happy or sad about the way things are going. Happy people are good.

Think about this when you are having a bad day. It’s easy to get caught in complaining about something to team members, don’t do it, you don’t have to lie when things are looking bad but that doesn’t mean you have to moan about it or start a speech and list your personal frustrations. You have your own boss to do that to

Watch “Saving Private Ryan”, there’s a part where Tom Hanks says complaining always goes up the ladder, it’s true.