If you struggle with project management,
getting things
done, moving your team forward
to outcomes, I'm going to share with you
the three very different
unique perspectives
I have that I've learned
from being coached and trained
from some of the best project managers
in the world
to building
and managing not only companies
but projects and OKRs and strategies.
I mean, you name
the management strategy
out there
to try to get more done with your team,
I've read it, I've consumed it.
But what I'm going to share with you
today is a completely
different perspective.
To simplify it,
to look for the minimum effective dose,
not try to boil the ocean,
but what are the three moves that I feel?
If you guys
add, that’s probably
missing from your execution
today will have the biggest impact
on your projects and getting things done.
Let's get into it.
The one thing you will
quickly learn from me
if I'm managing a project
and you're part of that team,
is that I like to grab everything
and put it into what
I call a project file.
And it is not complicated.
Some of you guys want to talk
about Asana and Trello and the toolings,
which is great.
But what I want to encourage
you to do is consider
just dumping everything
into a project file
to be able to start
playing with it, to work with it.
So what's unique is the way
I structure that project file.
There's three specific elements
that make it different.
The way I look at projects
that you may be missing right now
in your process.
Number one is the success criteria.
I'm a big fan of asking people
when this is successful,
let's list out the 4 to 6 different areas
that we’ll know have improved
measurable impact
in the business or in your life.
That's going to decide
if this project has been successful,
what are the success criterias
that we're going to list out
so that we all know
that as especially
if you have multiple team members?
Yeah, three people on a project,
you've got 20 people on a project,
you need to make sure everybody's
rowing the boat in the same direction.
They're pulling on the rope
in the same direction.
And the only way to ensure
that is to get on the same page
for the specific success
criterias of the project.
That's number one.
Number two is that you
define the measurement,
what are the leading indicators?
What are the activities?
What are we going to agree
upon daily, weekly, monthly
that we're going to measure
as a team and review to let us know
we're making progress towards
the outcome, the success criterias.
Because oftentimes
what I've discovered
and I was just on a project meeting,
people get really excited
about like
moving things forward and creating
and like pushing the boulder
up the mountain.
You know, this
like starts as a little snowball
and they keep building it and build
and it becomes harder.
But the closer they get to the top,
the more they get excited.
And they got this boulder.
But what I want to do
is slow things down and say, hey,
how are we going to know
we're making the right progress
in the right direction?
What data, what activities?
And can we all agree
what ours are going to be?
Somebody, it might be,
you know,
sending 25
emails per day
every day for the next two months. Right.
And that's
their contribution to the project.
Somebody else,
it might be like
meeting with the team every morning
for 15 minutes to do a stand up and say,
what did you do yesterday?
What are you doing today?
And are you stuck? Right?
So like
and then just measuring that,
it sounds crazy,
but I literally create a spreadsheet
and I link it in the project file.
Right now our teams are so big,
they're using like fancy data,
data tools and analytics and,
you know, airtables and all these tools.
But I like to keep it simple.
I like to break it down
and say, let’s just define
what we're going to measure as a team.
Every person on this, on this team
that we are going to review once a week.
Ideally, it's an activity,
it's an initiative,
and these are leading indicators
to the final outcome
that we all get on the same page on.
And if we do that and we measure it,
it becomes inevitable
that you will succeed
if you're willing
to measure and report back.
So that is a huge area
that most people miss and it’s
part of the project file.
The third aspect of the project file
that I think is unique
is I like to collect everything
that might exist - resources,
strategies, images.
I literally just got off a call
with my sales team
and they've got this process
that they call sell by chat.
So essentially
our sales team is chatting
through our sales inbox
and other different
platforms with potential buyers
all the time.
And a new person took over
and they started creating an SOP,
the standard operating procedure,
and I stopped them and I said,
have you collected all of this stuff?
Have you collected
all of the different resources
that exist
to define
this process
that you're going to go
create this project
that you're initiating?
And they were like, no, and I go, hey,
why don't we start with this?
And I’m telling you, even like,
I have a lot of clients that outsource,
you know,
to marketing agencies,
to sales
agencies, to
productivity agencies,
operation agencies.
And the thing that they miss is literally
just looking inside of their company
and collecting
not only stuff they've created,
but even external resources
that they like.
You know,
I was on another call
with my COO
and we were talking about
building a calendar
because our team is huge
now of everybody's time off
because what's happening
now is that there's projects
that need to execute
and there's
certain people
that are not in the loop and there’s
dependencies depending on timelines
and events
that people need to be aware of.
Just like one page
where the executive leadership team,
and the senior leadership team,
can see everybody's time off
so that we can see
opportunities to improve.
And all I did is
I went online to Google Images
and I searched
for examples of calendars,
one page team calendars,
duh duh duh duh duh,
and I went through it
until I found one template that I liked.
And I said this,
this is what it's supposed to look like.
I share that
because if you take
the internal resources
and you take literally 15 minutes
to research,
external resources
and you link them all
up in the project file
so that every new person
that might be added to the project
or you have this open when you're doing
your project meetings,
reviews it and is aware
and they know where it is
and it's easily accessible,
it will change the game
for how you manage projects.
The one thing stopping project
teams from being successful
is they don't create
a cadence for success,
and I like to use a framework
that I've created called the Weekly Sync.
It doesn't matter
what project you're working on today,
if you want to achieve an outcome,
you have to ask yourself
what is the rhythm of success?
How often are we going to look
at our activities
and our numbers and our progress?
And what is the right frequency
for doing that?
Is it daily? Is it weekly?
Is it monthly?
But at minimum,
if you are working on a project
that is meaningful
for me, my book launch,
I was dedicated to making sure
this thing was a bestseller.
And I and I sat down
and I said to the team,
what’s the rhythm we need to adhere to?
Now, you know, I'm
technically the talent, and I had a book
launch team
and a book CEO and everything.
I really wanted to show up and support.
I'm also running
another company, SaaS Academy,
and the book itself
is almost like birthing
a new business, a new startup.
And we set on the Weekly Sync structure
and the key is, is like defining upfront
what is the agenda.
So at minimum,
these are the three things
that always show up on a weekly sync.
The first one is a link
to the project file
and an update
and review of everybody's progress.
So in the project file,
you should have broken down
kind of the key projects
and sequencing and timelines,
having that open
to just get everybody
to report back on...
Hey Bob, you're working on this project.
How are you doing? Jane?
You're working on this project.
How are you doing?
Like getting them to give a red,
green, yellow status report.
Here's the timeline.
Make sure there's dates there.
Are you on track?
That is the first thing
that we start with.
Number two
is the metrics, the measurement,
and I always call it
the leading metrics to the outcome.
What are the numbers
that we're going to measure
that's going to get us
this specific outcome?
And how are we doing?
Are we red, green or yellow?
These are quantitative measurements
so that we know if somebody is on track.
The third thing is a list of discussions.
Now here's where most people
fail on the discussions
is I expect throughout the week
between our meetings
that my team is adding stuff
to the discussions.
So I know if that's not been the case,
if I show up to the meeting
and in the discussion, it's
just a public Google doc,
that if they do not have any new items
listed under discussions,
because what I'm looking for
is people that are executing
projects, seeing friction,
seeing challenges,
not getting responses and saying,
hey, we've got to solve that problem.
I'm going to add it to the list,
because what happens in
most project teams
is you get on there and you say,
does anybody have any discussions
and they're like, nope.
Everything is good.
I have nothing to review.
And then you're like, well,
why didn't you get this done?
Oh, you know what?
Last week
I was waiting on Jane,
but she was on vacation, huh?
Should we talk about vacation schedules?
Because that would be a great discussion
to have.
So to me,
if I don't see before
the meeting in the agenda of the weekly
sync, under discussions,
new items added by the team
that is part of that project,
then I know
they're not using the document
the way they need to be
and it has to be solved.
One of the biggest pet peeves that I have
is when I can't find the thing
that I know exists.
So what I've done
when it comes to project
management is I created this rule.
All people that work on a team with me
know this rule. It's called linkability.
And the rule is very simple.
If you have the document,
the project file, the HubSpot form,
whatever you're working
on, if you have it open
and then you email
anybody for advice or feedback
or you post a slack message,
you have to include the link.
It might sound small,
but I will tell you from experience,
if any time you talk about an asset,
you include the link
to your Dropbox location
to another Slack thread even,
you will increase
the project team's velocity
by just making things linkable.
Again, some of you might be like
this sounds so basic.
I will tell you when I was building
companies in the early days
and we didn't have all these online
kind of cloud tools like having a process
for when we document
or we talk about things in email
to link to the final place
or at least mention where it's located
because literally people be like,
yeah, I just reviewed the project file
and I didn't find this, this and this.
And then there's an email that’s
sent out to the whole team
and you're wondering,
well, where is that project file?
Like you had it open,
you didn't attach it, you didn't link it,
and everybody else is like, well,
I want to look at it.
Maybe I can help you.
Maybe I can see within there,
you know, where it could be
in that section.
And it's so interesting
to have especially new team members
that are kind of new
to communication
processes and like team
collaboration, that linkability,
linking up the thing is not part of it.
So for me,
it's part
of our communication guidelines,
it's part of our project management
rhythms and it's a non-negotiable.
And I usually just reply to somebody
that's forgotten to do it
and I go linkability? Question mark.
And they're like, oh, yes,
I need to make this likable
because sometimes they'll have
something on their computer
and they haven't put it up
in a shared folder to make it linkable.
And that's step one.
And then they can link it to the email,
to the slack post,
to the project management software,
or wherever they're talking about it,
to make it really easy for everybody else
to be aware and collaborate.
So if you want to level up
your project management
skills and be able to tackle
not only $10,000 projects
but $100,000 projects,
and maybe someday million
to $10 million projects,
then you need to perfect
these three areas.
You need to focus on the project file.
So you collect everything
and you put it into one place.
Then you got to get really clear
about the weekly sync
and what is the agenda
that we're going to go through
to prompt
the review to know that everybody
is on track?
What's that cadence look like?
And then finally get everybody
to agree to linkability
so that all the communication around
the project is moving forward
as fast as humanly possible
to get to that outcome
and make it impossible
that you don't hit your goal.
To help you guys
take your project management
skills to another level,
I've actually pulled out
our internal template for a project file
and it includes
a bunch of different sections
you may have never seen
as it pertains
to project management
to help you execute even better.
So click the link below
to download your copy.
I hope this finds you awesome.
I’ll see you in the next video.