Today we're going to talk about how to be a brilliant project manager.
It's a little bit of a play on words.
What if I told you that in our company, Brilliant, that we do 40 to 50 projects a year and in
the last 3 years not one project has been one hour late?
That's a pretty impressive and spectacular result.
These are ordinary people who have also learned how to become great project managers.
One of the first things we need to do is say, what do we mean by project manager?
Normally that title in corporate America is meant to elicit a highly trained person who
is extremely good logistically, can organize and can manage a large project.
Perhaps you're thinking of a big project like software or a physical construction project,
something like that.
But actually each of us do projects every single week.
You know, you're doing micro projects and they have the same effect.
Now there is a phenomenal side effect to becoming a good project manager.
The first and obvious result is, yeah, we get things done on time.
But there's a better thing and that is you get to build trust with your team.
Project management is more about people than it is about the project itself.
You know, when you become known for being the person who does what they say, when they
say, trust builds.
You know, it's a bit like if you said, I will have that document to you on Tuesday
morning at 9am and the document is there at 8.30 ready to go, that's fantastic.
Well what if you're not able to do it and you discover on early Monday morning, you're
not able to deliver the project on Tuesday.
Then there's a powerful way to still keep trust with your team even though you're going
to delay the deliverable of something you said you would do.
And the simple way of this is, remember, good news travels fast, bad news travels faster.
That means the moment you know, within minutes, you let the person know, I cannot deliver
at 9am, this is the reason I will have it by Wednesday morning.
Does that still work?
Now that still maintains trust because it shows respect and that you communicated this
when you found out.
You know, the way I learned that is I was a young man in my early 30s running a pretty
big software company and we were co-owned by one of the largest insurance companies
in the United States.
And I got to work a lot with the CEO and one day I called him to tell him that one of our
major projects was going to be late.
His first question was, when did you know that?
And I was able to say, an hour ago.
And I could tell the respect went way up.
In other words, I was able to maintain my trust and my reputation with that leader because
I knew and communicated very quickly.
And that's where we got the expression of good news travels fast, bad news travels faster.
One of the first things our team will say if they call me to tell me that something
is going to be late, that they said they would deliver on, that they would tell me exactly
when they found out.
Hey, I found out 10 minutes ago, I wanted you to know immediately.
So it's not about being perfect, it's about maintaining trust with your team.
And actually, it turns out to be a fairly simple thing to do.
But while we're about this, we're going to blend two things together.
As I said before, delivering powerful projects and being a brilliant project manager is as
much or more about the people than about the project itself.
So here's a couple of things we're going to go through to help you grow as a project
manager.
You know, I think as we go through these simple steps, I hope we can help you avoid the big
mistakes that most people make.
Now I wanted to point out that mistakes don't break trust.
How you own them does.
You know, if you don't phone the person and say, hey, I'm sorry I can't do it, you know,
and come up with excuses, that doesn't build up trust even if you let them know quickly.
It's owning it.
I messed up, I didn't plan properly, I underestimated the amount of time this would take, I'm going
to need, you know, a bit more time.
And then give them a definitive, when will you do it then?
And what will happen over time when you keep doing this is the team will come to know,
we can give it to her because she always delivers on time.
And that's the reputation.
It's not just, you know.
Did you do what you said you would do?
And how do you deliver on time?
So we're gonna talk about how to make that happen
every single time.
And so we're gonna talk about four components.
I'm gonna share with you the setup,
how we set up projects,
how we shape our projects.
Then we're gonna talk about giving people the heads up
and finally the wrap up.
So the four elements of the project.
So let's get to the first part, the setup.
Now here, you wanna discover the one thing
that matters in the project.
So to do this, meet with the stakeholders.
And what do I mean by stakeholder?
I mean anybody who's involved in the project
one way or another.
Not just the owners or not just your boss,
but people who would end up owning this project
and living with it.
So let's say you're building a new,
installing a new type of accounting practice
or you're inventing, adding something to your app
or there's some specific element.
Think about who would end up living with this?
And then who would it affect most?
These are the stakeholders.
The next thing you wanna do is give it meaning.
When you're at that meeting, give it meaning.
Why does this project matter?
Explain why this matters
and what would it mean for the organization
if you pulled it off?
Say, this is why it matters,
but what if we actually pulled this off?
I think of the story of a very old British show
called My Fair Lady.
And there's a moment there
where she's really struggling to learn to speak
like he's trying to train her
and all the elocution lessons.
And then he just, his humanity kicks in for a minute
and he sits down with her and he says,
think about what you're trying to accomplish,
the beauty and mastery of the English language.
And she looks at him
and immediately she starts to pronounce things better.
In other words, months of work suddenly kicked in
because he helped her see
what she was trying to accomplish for her, not for him.
And so this is a big turning point
in that particular story,
but it's also the turning point in your project.
So here's what we wanna do.
We wanna find about, think about why we're doing this.
Here's a power hack.
Find out the largest pain point.
So this is not a time to get a wishlist from everybody.
We want these 15 features.
This is what if I could fix one thing
that would make the biggest difference.
By focusing everybody on the one thing,
then what's gonna happen is
we're gonna leverage the Pareto principle.
In other words, 20% of the time
is gonna give us 80% of the benefit.
Now you say, well, we have to fix all these other things.
Yes, but if we do a series of thin slice projects,
thinking like eating a loaf of bread,
you don't take a loaf of bread,
cut it in half and try and eat the whole thing.
So we're looking for that one thing, not a wishlist.
And a lot of people
when they're first learning to manage projects
get carried away with,
well, what if we could have everything?
What would that look like?
And now what we're doing is
we're at that first setup meeting,
we're trying to get an agreement
on what will give us the biggest bang for the buck.
So we've given it meaning
and then agree what does done mean.
Now this mean done means I delivered the project,
we actually wrote the software and tested it.
Does done mean I finished the document
and hit the send button?
What does done exactly mean?
So this is a very helpful element.
So we've talked about, so we meet with the stakeholders
and now what we've done is we've set up the project
looking for the one big thing,
we've given it meaning
and we've asked what if we pull this off?
What does it mean for the organization?
And so what we're trying to do is land that one big thing
and then decide what does done mean
if I delivered this one big thing.
Notice what we're doing subtly here.
We're setting expectations.
We don't leave it open-ended where people think,
oh, well, she's gonna deliver this incredible project
or he promised us these 10 things
because what you've done
is you've helped them focus on the one thing.
So what's their expectation?
The one thing's gonna be done.
What does done mean?
Done can mean different things to different people
so we settle that, the big thing and what does done mean.
Now the project is set up.
So let's talk about how do we shape up the project?
Now what we mean by shape up is how do we give it shape?
So we know what the big thing is
and we know what done means.
Now we wanna shape up the project
and like the loaf of bread analogy,
we wanna take the thinnest slice possible.
The joke at Brilliant is the slice has to be so.
than you can see through it. And what we mean by that is we don't want boil-the-ocean projects.
You know, you don't need to try and boil the ocean. The bigger the project, the more complex
it is and the higher the probabilities, you will know we're close to deliver what you
have to be.
In fact, statistics show that 60% of requirements on the project are usually wrong. So we start
to think about it very carefully. And now the way to do this, the power hack, if you
like, is don't start with, you know, what are we going to trying to do? Start with the
appetite. The appetite means how much time can I really commit to this? Now, you've already
installed some deep work sessions into your schedule. So you already have some buckets
of deep work scheduled in your weekly program, in your outline. So in that case, you want
to say how many deep work sessions is this going to take? I can commit five deep work
sessions to this. And if you're doing one deep work session per week, well, then that
is five weeks. Now, what we're trying to, we will get into this a lot more in a lot
more detail as this course progresses. But for now, we want you to think about what's
the appetite? How much time am I committing? What's included? We knew what done with, but
now we're getting into the detail what's included and very specifically what is not
included. I'm not going to write the software. I'm just doing the specifications. You know,
I'm going to design the new marketing campaign, but I'm not actually going to build the funnels
and I'm not going to connect it so we can actually do a transaction. Decide what's included
and what is not. Then circle back to to the stakeholders and say, OK, we're going to spend
this much time. This is what's included. This is what is not. So now we've shaped up
the project. Step three, we want to give them a heads up. So we want to set expectations
of what and when. So we've already said this is the time. This is what we're delivering.
This is what we're not delivering. Now we want to do is pick a team and we want to create
margin with the team. You know, when we said it was going to take four deep work sessions,
it may take other people's time as you include it. Create margin, but don't sandbag. What
does sandbagging mean? It means you say, oh, it's going to take six weeks when everybody
knows it doesn't take more than two. That will hurt your reputation, not build it. In
other words, take your time and add another 20 percent on top of that. I think that generally
is a good rule of thumb. And, you know, have decision integrity. And what I mean by that
is try to let people know that we may finish this on time, but we're leaving ourselves
a little margin. Tell people that. And, you know, the best thing then is because when
you do that and you actually show your team we've built in margin, the concept of building
margin into projects is a very powerful way to train your team that we don't do things
right on the edge, because that sets us up for failure and that breaks trust and hurts
our reputation. So, we don't trade in excuses. We own the issues. We let people know quickly.
And finally, the wrap up. Now, the wrap up is a lot of fun. And here's the key to the
wrap up. You know, a lot of people skip this step because, oh, well, the project's done.
Let's move on to the next project. It's really important. All good leaders take a minute
and gather all the people who it connects to, all the stakeholders, maybe the whole
team if you're a smaller company, and say, hey, we delivered this project and this was
the effect. We did what we said we would do and we delivered it on time. And now we're
looking for not only telling them what we've done, but let's find heroes to the story.
Be really specific in giving your team recognition. Remember from previous trainings, we don't
do the general blip thing of awesome, good job. That stuff is mindless. You know, we
want to say the way Sally, the way that you led that specification or the way you designed
that screen was truly beautiful. It gave the project such a professional feel. You
want to be really specific. Go around and recognize team members and then take a minute
and celebrate as a team, right? Just zoom out for a minute and say, this project was
important because it got us down the road. Okay, we've talked about the four powerful
things, right? How to set up the project with the stakeholders and we decide exactly what
the big pain point is for them and what has done me. Then we went to shape it up. We look
for the thinnest slice. Again, we look for the thinnest slice because we rather do lots
of thin slice projects than try and do one big project. Honestly, if your project's taking
more than six weeks, the slice is not thin enough. I like projects that are one to three
weeks long. That means you've got a nice thin slice.
ice on that. And once we've done all that, we've gone, what's our appetite?
What's included? What's not? We've communicated that back.
Now, everybody's expectations are set of when and what.
And now we give them a heads up as we go through the process.
In other words, we keep them in the loop.
If it's a longer project, specifically, we don't trade in excuses.
We build in margin and we deliver what we said
we deliver when we said and the wrap up, take a minute to celebrate
and find the heroes of that project.
I know you're going to love being a brilliant project manager.
And I hope this training was helpful. Thanks for listening.