important contribution to their job, and to the organization. It is only when
you concentrate your efforts on your key result areas that you will achieve
the most significant results possible for you in the shortest period of time.
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7. Set and Keep Deadlines
Set deadlines for important goals and stick to them. Deadlines act as forcing
systems that cause you to work harder and more effectively as the deadline
approaches.
A goal or an assignment without a deadline is usually an exercise in futility.
It has no motivational force behind it. It creates no compulsion to closure. It
is something that you easily procrastinate on, and put off until the last
minute.
Set deadlines for everything you do. Promise other people that you will
finish certain jobs by the deadline. When you promise others, you motivate
yourself to fulfill the promise. When you place your honor and your ego on
the line by promising others, you find yourself internally driven and
motivated to get the job done exactly as you said, on schedule.
8. Allow Enough Time
Allow enough time to do everything well. Take the time to complete the job
in an excellent fashion. Practice the “30% Rule” and always allow yourself
an extra 30% of time to complete any task. Build in a cushion for
unexpected difficulties, delays or setbacks. Highly productive workers
always allow enough time to do the job right.
9. Maintain a Steady Pace
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Don’t hurry or rush around frantically to get the job done. Maintain an easy
pace and work steadily. Remember the fable of “The Tortoise and the Hare.”
Highly productive people work with a certain rhythm that allows them to
flow through enormous amounts of work without becoming stressed or
anxious. As Thomas Carlisle said, “Our great business in life is not to see
what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.”
A hallmark behavior of successful salespeople, executives and entrepreneurs
is that they do one thing at a time. They do the most important thing in front
of them, and they stay with it until it is complete. They set priorities and they
single-handle their tasks.
Think About Results
Result orientation, the ability to get things done, is a key quality of all peak
performers. You can develop the ability to concentrate single-mindedly
through practice and repetition, over and over, until it becomes an ingrained
habit of success. Once you develop the skill of getting things done, the skill
will serve you for the rest of your life.
“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius,
power and magic in it.” (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
Action Exercises:
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1. Plan your work thoroughly in advance; have everything you need
before you begin work, and then resolve to focus and concentrate;
2. Bunch your tasks; do repetitive or similar jobs all at once, one after
the other, taking advantage of the learning curve;
3. Work on those tasks that give you the highest return on your
investment of mental, emotional and physical energy;
4. Create blocks of time when you can work for extended periods
without interruptions. This is the key to the accomplishment of
important tasks;
5. Set deadlines for yourself for each task, and give yourself rewards for
task completion;
6. Develop a compulsion to closure. Discipline yourself to work steadily,
without stopping, until the task is complete;
7. Keep repeating the words, “Back to work!” throughout the day to
keep yourself focused and concentrated on your key result areas.
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Chapter Six
Managing Multi-Task Jobs
“America is unique because it offers you an economic ladder to climb. And
here’s what’s exciting: it is the bottom of the ladder that’s crowded, not the
top.” (Jim Rohn)
All of life is a series of projects. A project is a complex task. It is often
called a multi-task job. This type of job requires the coordination of the
efforts of several people, each of whom is responsible for part of the job,
with every part of the job being necessary for successful completion. Your
ability to handle these multi-task jobs is a critical skill for success.
All achievements of consequence are complex and involve the cooperation
of many people. An example would be the moon project, for instance, where
tens of thousands of men and women had to coordinate their activities to put
a man on the moon.
Even simple tasks like planning a party, or producing a brochure or
newsletter, require the ability to plan multiple tasks. This type of planning
and organizing is one of the core skills of time management. Your ability to
put together and work with a team of people on a project is the most
important skill for advancement in your work.
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The Key Management Skill
A recent study by Stanford University on the qualities that companies look
for in promoting people into the position of Chief Executive Officer
concluded that the ability to put together a team to accomplish a task was the
most important single identifiable quality of an executive who was destined
for the fast track in his or her career.
Take the example of the spectacular success of a man like Lee Iacocca, who
turned Chrysler Corporation around when it was almost bankrupt. One of the
reasons he was hired into the presidency of Chrysler was because of his
ability to bring senior executives together from a variety of different areas to
turn the company around. In his first 36 months at Chrysler, he replaced 35
out of 36 senior vice presidents. His ability to assemble this team made all
the difference. In his autobiography, he gives full credit to the men and
women on those teams who turned the company around.
Your ability to put together teams to do multi-task jobs or complete complex
projects will determine the course of your career as much as any other
factor. It will enable you to multiply yourself times the talents and efforts of
others, and accomplish vastly more than you ever could on your own.
A Learnable Skill
Fortunately, project management is a learnable skill, like riding a bicycle. It
can be divided into a series of steps, each of which you can master, one at a
time.
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1. Start with the End in Mind
In managing any project, you begin by defining the ideal desired result of
the project. What exactly are you trying to accomplish? What will the
project look like if it is a complete success?
Start from the successful completion, the ideal desired result, written down
and clarified on paper, and work back to the beginning. Do this in
conjunction with the team members involved whenever possible.
How will you be able to tell if you have completed this project successfully?
This step, of thinking through and defining your ideal end result, is one of
the most valuable of all mental and physical planning tools for any project.
2. Start at the Beginning
Once you are clear about your desired result, you then start from the
beginning and determine what you are going to have to do to get from where
you are to the completion of this project, on schedule, and on budget.
Determine a specific deadline or target to aim at. Make sure that it is realistic
and achievable.
3. Assemble the Team
Bring together all the people whose contributions will be necessary for the
success of the project. Sometimes you need to assemble the team before you
can even decide upon the ideal result and the schedule. Remember that
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people are everything. Take ample time to think carefully about the people
who are going to be the team members.
Fully 95% of success in management is selection. 95% of everything that
you accomplish as a leader will be determined by your ability to select the
people who are going to help you to do the work. If you make the mistake of
selecting poor team members, you will almost invariably find it more
difficult to achieve the goals that you have set for yourself.
Jim Collins, in his best selling book Good to Great, says, “The key to
success is to get the right people on the bus, and get the wrong people off the
bus. Then, put the right people in the right seats on the bus.”
Focus on the people before the task. Remember that because all productivity
comes from people; the people are the most important ingredient.
4. Share the Ownership
Instill ownership of the project in the team members by sharing the job with
them. There is a direct relationship between how much a person feels a sense
of ownership for the job and how committed he or she is to making the
project a success. One of the key jobs of leadership is to instill this feeling of
ownership in each member of the team, so that each person feels personally
responsible for the accomplishment of the overall project. You accomplish
this by discussing every detail of the project with the people who are
expected to carry it out.
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5. Develop a Shared Vision
Develop a “shared vision.” A shared vision is an ideal future picture of
success that everyone buys into. How do you develop a shared vision? You
sit down with the members of your team and work with them to answer the
question, “What are we trying to accomplish?” You encourage everyone to
contribute, to visualize and imagine the ideal outcome or desired result of
the project. Once this vision is clear and shared by everybody, you move
onto the development of “shared plans” to achieve the vision.
6. Shared Plans
Create “shared plans” with the members of the team. These plans are
essential to successful project completion. This step requires that everyone
work together to discuss and develop the plans. Plans include the step-bystep
activities that will be necessary to complete the project. Everyone
knows what has to be done, and even more important, everyone knows what
each team member is supposed to do.
The more time you spend planning with the members of your team in the
early stages, the more committed and creative they will be in accomplishing
the task once you get started.
7. Set Schedules and Deadlines
Once you have a shared vision and shared plans, and everyone knows
exactly what is to be done, and what the ideal result will look like, the next
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step is for you to set a deadline for completion based on the consensus of
your team. You may require sub-deadlines as well.
Achieving consensus is extremely important in building a peak performing
team. Ask people how long they think it will take to complete each part of
the task, and to complete the task overall. As the result of discussion and
exchange, everyone should agree that the project can and will be completed
by a certain time.
One of the biggest mistakes in project management occurs when the project
leader sets a date or deadline that is arbitrary and with which the team
members do not agree. In each case where this happens, problems arise and
the deadline is not met. If the deadline is met, it is usually so full of mistakes
and problems that it would have been much better to have agreed on a
reasonable deadline before you began.
Set your deadlines based on the consensus of your team, or even a majority
decision, if that works for you. Get everyone to agree on the timing and
scheduling for each job or task that they will be expected to contribute to the
overall project.
8. List Everything That Must Be Done
List every task, function and activity that must be completed, right down to
the smallest job. The more that you can break the project down into
individual jobs and tasks, the easier it is for you to plan, organize, supervise,
delegate, coordinate and get the project finished on time.
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9. Identify the Information You Will Require
Identify any additional information that you will require to complete the
project. List the acquisition of the information as a separate task and assign
it or delegate it specifically to one of the team members. Set a deadline.
Remember, a decision without a deadline is merely a meaningless
discussion. Nothing gets done.
10. Identify the Limiting Factor
Determine the limiting step in the completion of the project. What part of the
project, what task or activity, determines the speed at which the project can
be completed? What part of the task is the bottleneck that sets the speed for
everything else?
For example, when we decide to do a public seminar for 1000 people, the
limiting step that determines everything else is finding and booking a hotel
or convention facility in a particular city. Finding and finalizing the space
for the seminar is almost always the most difficult bottleneck in the whole
project. Once we have confirmed a location, we can then begin marketing,
sales, advertising, promotion, ticket sales, the shipping of products and
materials, staffing, and everything else.
In every project, there is a bottleneck. There is always one task, the
achievement of which determines the schedule for everything else. Start off
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by identifying your limiting step, and then place the alleviating of that
constraint as your top priority.
Put your most talented and capable people, and even yourself, to work on
that task. Nothing can be done until that job is done first.
11. Organize the Project
Organize the different parts of the project in two ways: sequential tasks and
parallel tasks. You organize by sequence when you determine which jobs
must be done before other jobs can be done, with each task in order.
Sequential organization is necessary where a particular task requires that
another task be completed before it can be started. In almost every case,
before you do anything, you have to do something else first. Organize the
task sequentially with a logical process of activities from beginning through
to the end of the project.
The second way to organize the task is parallel. Parallel activities exist when
