In order to spare you the same sort of heartache.
I highly suggest you get yourself some clarity. You cannot hit a target,
you cannot see.
well hey there,
welcome to Mak TV where we of course believe that that transformation from
manager to leader is such a crucial one.
And that's because true leaders,
they change lives and they're having a profound effect on today's working
environment.
So today's episode is inspired by one of our subscribers who sent an email in
asking for help with regards to developing a work plan. And when she sent this,
I remember, you know,
just my own feelings of how frustrated I was as well to kind of figure out like
how to project plan and how to allocate tasks. It was really quite stressful.
And so I understood the sentiment of where the question was coming from.
And so obviously she and I worked through it,
but I thought that it might be really good for us to consider it on the channel
today. So that's what we're going to be talking about,
how to create a work plan.
So I'm going to be covering the four essentials that you need when it comes to
project planning. So let's dive right in.
So one of the first things that you need to get from the moment a project lands
in your lap is clarification. I know that for me,
one of the mistakes that I did was that I didn't get enough clarification.
So often times I ended up running down a path that I assumed was the right path
to go down. And it actually wasn't at all what my boss wanted.
So in order to spare you the same sort of heartache,
I highly suggest you get yourself some clarity. You cannot hit a target,
you cannot see.
And so set up that very crucial meeting with your boss and get yourself clarity
in terms of what the expectations are. So you might be wondering to yourself,
what questions am I supposed to be asking in this meeting Makeda? Well,
not to worry. I got you covered.
So here are a few questions that you absolutely need clarification on.
So number one is what are the deliverables? So what does success look like?
What is it that they're expecting to see at the very end of this project.
And how will you know throughout it whether or not you're on the right path or
not. Number two is how much autonomy do you have?
So how much leeway do you have to make choices throughout this entire project?
Number three is what is the specific date of expected delivery.
So as an extra tip, it's not only good to get the date,
but it's really good to get the time because Monday to,
you might mean Monday afternoon and Monday to them might need 8:00 AM on Monday.
So be super clear on what the expected time and date of delivery is.
And number four is what are the resources?
Are there any budgets or time constraints or budget constraints that you should
be aware of?
All of this you need to know upfront and you need to clarity on upfront.
The second step that you need to consider is how you want to develop the project
plan. So not necessarily like execute the project,
but how you want to actually develop it.
Do you want to do that independently or do you want to do that collaboratively?
Now, personally, for me, I really enjoy developing it collaboratively. I really,
really liked that.
But I do understand that there are certain benefits to doing it independently to
a certain extent.
Here are a few things to consider in terms of making that decision whether or
not you're going to do it independently or collaboratively.
So obviously working independently means that you can probably do it really
quick, right?
You could probably knock out developing that project plan in a number of hours.
And that means that you have a lot more control so you can decide who you're
going to delegate it to or not. This is really great. However, here's the risk.
If you do it alone,
you might be missing key elements because you didn't get input from anybody
else. Now, of course, working collaboratively has a whole lot of pros.
For example,
you get an opportunity to work on your leadership skills because you're working
with a team in this setting.
And of course you're empowering and developing that as you go along.
You're going to get a whole lot more ideas and as an added bonus you will have a
lot more buy in from the team because they were part of the process from the
very beginning.
But of course as a con it's going to take longer because obviously when you're
working with a group of people there's a lot of competing ideas and you know you
just have to like sift through everything so it's going to take a lot longer if
you decide to do it collaboratively.
There's really pros and cons to both so it's up to you at the end of the day how
you want to do it.
Now what I really like to do finally when I got the hang of all of this is I
like to do a combination of the both.
So I would independently on my own work on the very high level like outline of
what it was going to look like and then that way when I approached it with the
team,
I already had a roadmap for them to follow so that we weren't all over the place
and wasting time. So maybe you might decide to do it that way for yourself.
Either way you really do have to make a choice in terms of whether or not you
want to develop that project plan on your own collaboratively or maybe a
combination of the both.
The next step you want to do is to reverse engineer the outcome.
It is far easier.
Let me tell you to think in terms of outcome first and what are the things that
you need to do in order to hit that target.
So let me give you an example of what I mean when I say you want to reverse
engineer the outcome.
It would be like if you had a goal of let's say running a marathon in January,
2021.
It would be so much easier for you to think backwards in terms of what you need
to do in order to get there, then to think about step one.
The same thing goes for project planning.
You don't want to start off with what small step do I have to take first.
You want to think in terms of, okay, in order to reach this goal,
what do I have to do?
You need to be thinking about the small action steps and the decisions that you
need to make in order to help you get to your destination.
Now when I say small action steps,
I don't actually mean like the really minutiae stuff, the really tiny stuff.
I'm talking about broad strokes.
What is it that you know you and the team need to accomplish in order for you to
get to that end goal. By the way,
there is a great project management tool that you can use. It's called Trello.
I'm pretty sure I've spoken about this a thousand times on my channel before,
but it's because I absolutely love it.
I use it down to this day in my business and it's just, it's so simple to use.
It's free to use and you can use it collaboratively as well with your team.
And it just like the entire process of Trello is exactly what you need to think
of when you think of a project. So it's just very intuitive. Um, anyways,
it's a great tool to use, no pressure to use it. But let me tell you,
it'll make your life a lot easier.
So I'll put the link for that in the description box below.
The fourth step is to identify the obstacles.
So we all know that things happen regardless of how well we plan something
right. Now,
of course you're not gonna know every obstacle that might like hit your path,
but you can't anticipate what might happen and come up with a plan as to how
you're going to deal with it. People get sick all the time.
So if you have a bunch of tasks assigned to like one person on the team,
then if that person's out sick, then it might halt the entire project.
So in this case,
it might be good to have a few members know what's going on or be in the loop as
to what that person is doing so that if that person's out sick,
someone else can take over.
Or it can be as simple as you using that project management tool or a doc or
something where everyone has to update what they're doing.
So that if someone is out sick,
then everybody knows what's going on and they know what has been done and what
needs to get done and they can like pick up the ball and keep running with it.
You just wanted me thinking through what are the things that potentially can go
wrong and what could I do to prevent it or how will I respond just in case it
does happen.
Now I know I said I was only going to share four tips in this video today,
but I wanted to add a bonus one,
which is something that is actually stung me personally in the ass many,
many times. Pad your time guys.
I cannot tell you how important this is.
I have personally underestimated how long something was going to take me so many
times. I would be like, Oh yeah,
that's only going to take me a week or I think that to myself.
And then two weeks later I haven't finished what I thought I was going to
finish.
And we underestimate how long it takes somebody else to do something right.
If you're relying on a team to do something,
they might have a lot of other things or a lot of other plates that are spinning
that they have to take care of and it might take them longer to do something
than you think.
So it's much better just to give you and your team some extra time for just in
case you got diverted for unexpected changes or challenges or just in general if
it takes you a little bit longer to do something than you initially expected.
If you liked this video,
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If you're looking for more tips and advice in terms of team, team development,
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Thank you so much for watching.
I really hope that you found this video to be extremely valuable to you.
I hope that you have a fantastic rest of the week.
Don't forget to keep smiling and I'll see you in the next one.