This cast concludes our guidance on how to give feedback on how you want projects reported on.

Projects are generally governed by Horstman's Law of Project Management: Who does What by When. Sometimes it's a five year project, and sometimes it's 3 weeks. But it boils down to a string of tasks and deadlines, done by humans. And often we humans end up straggling after ripe blackberries when we should be meeting deadlines.

One thing all of us Project Managers can do is to ask for what we want, and then give feedback when we get it, and when we don't. Easy!

  [Play in Popup]

This guidance describes how to give feedback on how you want projects reported on.

Projects are generally governed by Horstman's Law of Project Management: Who does What by When. Sometimes it's a five year project, and sometimes it's 3 weeks. But it boils down to a string of tasks and deadlines, done by humans. And often we humans end up straggling after ripe blackberries when we should be meeting deadlines.

One thing all of us Project Managers can do is to ask for what we want, and then give feedback when we get it, and when we don't. Easy!

  [Play in Popup]

This guidance describes how to manage work and decisions being done on a project.

Projects are generally governed by Horstman's Law of Project Management: Who does What by When. Sometimes it's a five year project, and sometimes it's 3 weeks. But it boils down to a string of tasks and deadlines, done by humans. And often we humans end up straggling after ripe blackberries when we should be meeting deadlines.

One thing all of us Project Managers can do to keep things on track is to run our project meetings as a Drumbeat Meeting.

  [Play in Popup]

This guidance describes how to manage work and decisions being done on a project.

Projects are generally governed by Horstman's Law of Project Management: Who does What by When. Sometimes it's a five year project, and sometimes it's 3 weeks. But it boils down to a string of tasks and deadlines, done by humans. And often we humans end up straggling after ripe blackberries when we should be meeting deadlines.

One thing all of us Project Managers can do to keep things on track is to run our project meetings as a Drumbeat Meeting.

  [Play in Popup]

This cast concludes our guidance on how to have project statuses reported and discussed.

At Manager Tools – and Career Tools – we LOVE projects. Effective managers are really good at managing projects. Projects provide a focus, an attention, that often regular responsibilities don’t. We’re not saying that projects are more important per se. [We do think that more important stuff gets put into project format, though.] Nevertheless, in the modern, less formal organization, projects are going to be how more and more work, and particularly important work, gets done.

So why aren’t we all a lot better at them? Project management skills are some of the important operational skills that effective managers have. Too many of us don’t handle projects well. We’re too afraid to hold people accountable. We’re too willing to be understanding. We’re willing to accept delays early. We think that’s okay…but those of us with lots of project experience know…it’s not. Early delays portend later failures.

One thing we CAN do is be more effective at teaching and handling project reporting. It seems simple…but it’s a great tool used to improve more consistency in project work.

  [Play in Popup]

This guidance describes how to have project statuses reported and discussed.

At Manager Tools – and Career Tools – we LOVE projects. Effective managers are really good at managing projects. Projects provide a focus, an attention, that often regular responsibilities don’t. We’re not saying that projects are more important per se. [We do think that more important stuff gets put into project format, though.] Nevertheless, in the modern, less formal organization, projects are going to be how more and more work, and particularly important work, gets done.

So why aren’t we all a lot better at them? Project management skills are some of the important operational skills that effective managers have. Too many of us don’t handle projects well. We’re too afraid to hold people accountable. We’re too willing to be understanding. We’re willing to accept delays early. We think that’s okay…but those of us with lots of project experience know…it’s not. Early delays portend later failures.

One thing we CAN do is be more effective at teaching and handling project reporting. It seems simple…but it’s a great tool used to improve more consistency in project work.

  [Play in Popup]

This guidance describes how to run the first meeting you have with your team about a new project your team will be doing.

A manager we know got assigned a project for he and his team a couple of years ago, and he asked us to critique his email that he was sending out to announce the project, both big picture and early assignments. We knew this manager, and knew his team were collocated with him. Why, we thought, would a manager send out a LOOOOOOONG email to his team with LOTS of details about a not unimportant project?

He told us, well, that’s just the way I’ve always done it.

Well, there’s a better way. It’s MUCH more effective to have a brief meeting. It’s called a SPOT meeting, and even though it’s yet another meeting, it’s totally worth it. Here’s how to run one.

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This guidance describes how to assign a project to a direct and set up some simple reporting that will greatly increase early (and overall) success.

Mark’s favorite story about managers struggling with simple day to day things is the one where the CEO asks for help with his admin. Mark has been facilitating the strategy session of a billion dollar firm, and during one of the breaks, the CEO asks for time alone. Mark assumes he wants to discuss the topic of the moment, where to invest capital in the next 1-3 years. But no. The CEO says: I’ve got a problem with my admin, she’s not doing some stuff right, how do I handle it?

Even CEOs have managerial challenges, and sometimes managerial challenges are simple, or small, or basic, or whatever word you want to use that isn’t ‘strategic’, or, ‘fundamental.’ For instance, what’s the best way to assign some work to a direct and make sure they get off to a good start?

Sharp managers know to definitely worry about the beginning, and NOT to worry about asking for regular reporting.

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This cast describes how give feedback to a project team member if you are a project manager.

Despite Manager Tools stated disavowal of the matrix organizational structure, we've said before we know it exists, and many of us are in one. That means that there are project managers. We've said before that the Manager Tools original Feedback model is for managers only. So what do project managers do?

We're going to address just one part of the PM's challenges here: how to give feedback to project members. And the short answer is: use the Manager Tools PEER Feedback Model. And since now we're applying it to both Peers AND Projects, we might periodically call it the PFM . . . even though we generally shy away from acronyms. This is just another addition to the family of both Feedback casts and Basics casts . . . because we know that high performance managers and leaders and executives provide candid and direct feedback to their directs.

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In this cast, we conclude our conversation on how to delegate and manage projects more effectively based on the DiSC profiles of your team members.

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