The Brogue Hog

An important aspect of Project Management is scheduling time accurately. This is a critical component of Project planning as this will decide the deadline for the completion of a project - whether small, medium or mega. Closely linked to this is your credibility since you have to meet the deadlines you have committed.

Another crucial impact of Project time scheduling is that when deadlines are not met and timelines gets extended, project costs escalate accordingly. This will impact on the profitability of your project work. Additionally, it may lead to unnecessary stress and work load in the execution of the projects. More importantly, your credibility takes a beating and can trigger a whole range of other avoidable problems.

Therefore assessing the time period aptly for varied tasks assumes great importance in Project Planning. The usual problem that most people commit is underestimating the time needed to execute different types of jobs. This is especially so when the person is not very familiar with certain type of tasks. When you are ignorant about certain areas of work involved, it leads to improper judgment of time schedules.

Another aspect is that people fail to fully comprehend the enormity of the tasks involved. They are unable to realize the entire dynamics of the activities that a project work demands. You have to have a clear idea of the entire spectrum of work involved in a specific project.

The foremost requirement for estimating time schedule correctly is to clearly understand what you need to achieve. You have to have a firm objective of the outcome of the project. This would mean that you gain a complete and comprehensive picture of the entire project work to be undertaken. Every single aspect of the project work must be crystal clear in your mind’s eye. Of course this is gained as you gather more experience. Nonetheless you must strive to thoroughly understand the nuances and nitty-gritty involved in the simplest of tasks. Once you have absolute knowledge of the full range of tasks to be executed, you will be in total control and be able to handle any situations effectively.

The next part is to break down the entire project work into different units of task. By splitting them into different small units, you will know the entire range of work to be undertaken for each of the segments thoroughly. There should no unknown areas as these prove tricky, and invariably consume the greatest amount of time and follow-up. If there are some unfamiliar areas, every effort must be applied to understand the nature of the task and the best way to successfully execute them. After all the multifarious tasks of a project are covered in all their detail and complexity, you will be able to make time schedules for each and every aspect of the task segments. It will enable you make accurate time estimation.

An important element of project planning is allowing time for administrative work such as liaison work, supporting documentation, meetings, quality assurance, supervision, project planning, project management, etc.

Another vital part of scheduling is factoring in time for contingency situations as accidents and emergencies, changed priorities, absenteeism and sickness of employees, breakdown of equipment, non-delivery of supplies, disruptions, strike, quality control rejections, natural disasters and a host of other unexpected turn of events. Very often these are not taken into immediate account and when such situations arise, you will come under intense pressure as the work runs beyond the scheduled time. It is therefore absolutely crucial to incorporate for unforeseen events and build them into the time schedule.

A systematic and meticulous way of assessing every minute aspect of project planning and management will help you in making accurate time schedules for any type of project work. As you gain hands-on experience in handling project work of various dimensions, you will soon become an expert in drawing up appropriate time schedules and project plans.

In such project planning, the standard method employed is to list all the tasks to be undertaken for project execution under different categories. Such a listing process is self-limiting and like a dead end. However by Mind Mapping, you will be able to cover the most intricate details under different sub-groups and make accurate time estimation.

Apart from covering every minute part of project work, Mind Maps will help trigger new ideas and solutions, and reveal the links and connections between different aspects of project work. By highlighting the association between various parts of a project you will gain greater depth of the intricacies involved and know how to tackle them in an efficient and creative manner. You can club all the various Mind Maps into a comprehensive Mind Map so you can assess clearly the dimensions and scale of the project work.

Since concise words are used in Mind Maps, you will be able to cover the entire gamut of work involved in the project plan easily, and to evaluate how segments of job could be better coordinated and aligned for effective execution. These and many other critical advantages could be gained from using Mind Maps. In the hands of an experienced Mind Mapper, not just Project time estimation even the entire Project Planning and Management are made easy and perfect tasks. Learn Mind Mapping to gauge its effectiveness.

About the Author:

Dr. Vj Mariaraj is a Mind Map enthusiast and has been using Mind Maps for the past twelve years. He has created over 5650 Mind Maps. To learn more about mind mapping send an email to freemindmap@aweber.com . He is the founder of BusinessBookMindMap.com that creates Mind Map Summaries of Business Books. To learn more visit http://BusinessBookMindMap.com/mind-map.php?ea25

A focus group is a group of employees or current
customers that discuss and brainstorm new ways
to improve different parts of your business.

Below are online promotion secrets to use focus
groups for marketing intelligence.

1. They can give you new ideas on how to advertise
and market your product or service to your targeted
audience.

2. They can give you ideas that could help improve
your current product or service. For example, you
could make it smaller, faster, heavier, etc.

3. They can give you ideas for new products or
services to develop and sell. For example, a new
gift wrapping service for your products.

4. They can help you solve lingering problems with
your business. For example, you could give your
employees incentives to solve slow production.

5. They can give you new ideas on how to cut costs
and save money. For example, you could recycle
damaged or old products instead of trashing them.

6. They can find new ways to improve your current
customer service policy. For example, hire extra
operators so you don’t have to put anyone on hold.

7. They can give you new ideas on how to get the
most and best out of your employees in the less
amount of time.

8. They can give you news ideas for upsell, back
end and add-on products to sell. For example, you
could upsell a video when selling your books.

9. They can help you find new ways to stay ahead
of your competition. For example, you could give
your customers free shipping.

10. They can give ideas for raising your employees
morale. For example, you could hold a party, give
them a holiday bonus, give them a free day, etc.

May you succeed in your online promotion and make a lot
of money.

Warmly,

I-key Benney, CEO

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Many business people and managers are spending too much time
trying to change the underperforming people who work for them.
They seem to believe that if they train people - tell them what
to do or even threaten them with the sack - then the performance
level will go up.

The successful manager concentrates on developing the strengths
of his team members - not trying to correct their weaknesses.
Sometimes you have to manage around a weakness, but you can’t
make people what they’re not.

Some years ago I decided to improve my golf by taking some
lessons. A friend and I spent some hours with a professional
golfer and coach at a local country club. This was really useful
to me and I did get better. However my friend Robin hadn’t a
clue. No matter what the pro told him to do, how to change his
stance and his grip, he could hardly hit the ball.

If you’d given Robin a hundred lessons and threatened him with a
gun, I doubt if he’d ever have completed a round of golf in less
than two days. Robin is a successful lawyer and makes a lot of
money, however a golfer - he is not.

So if you have a sales person on your team who isn’t bringing in
the sales or a production engineer who isn’t making his quota,
then you have to make a decision. Is this person not producing
because they don’t have the ability - because they need more
training or - because there’s another reason?

You can read more about coaching and other reasons for non
performance in my book - “How to get more Sales by Motivating
your Team” but for the moment it’s important to understand that
the individual may not be able to do the job.

They may tell you they can do the job because they’re unwilling
to accept defeat; however I’ve known people in sales jobs who
shouldn’t be in sales and doctors, plumbers, lawyers and
engineers who were also in the wrong job.

What you need to do is get people who can’t do the job into a
job that they can do or get them out of your team.

I joined three companies as a manager and in each case I
inherited team members who didn’t have what it takes to do the
job. I’d usually find three categories of people in the teams -
The first group were the ‘good guys,’ the ones I knew could do
the job and wouldn’t give me any hassle.

The second group consisted of people who needed a bit of looking
after, watching closely and definitely some coaching.

The third group were the ones didn’t have either the skills or
the characteristics to do the job and no amount of training, or
anything I could do, would change that. I would often find that
these people, due to their lack of success, weren’t exactly
happy in the job anyway and were sometimes only too pleased to
be transferred to another position.

I hear you saying - “easier said than done Alan” and you’re
right. But the successful manager needs to address these issues
for the good of the team and the business.

The successful manager concentrates on strengths not weaknesses.
It’s vital to give your people feedback on their strengths and
also on their weaknesses. However these should only be
weaknesses that you know the individual can do something about.

It’s a waste of your time and effort trying to sort weaknesses
that can’t be sorted. Some people just can’t build relationships
with customers; others can’t work as fast as you need them to
and others can’t write a report to save their life.

Your most productive time as a manager will be spent giving
feedback on strengths and how to develop these even further.
Many managers spend the majority of their time with team members
trying to resolve weaknesses. They then don’t have the time or
sometimes the capability to give feedback on strengths.

There’s a new disease spreading rapidly through marketplaces.
Its main symptom is employee unhappiness. The cause is simple:
management is out of touch with the concerns, needs, and
aspirations of their co-workers. I refer to them as co-workers
rather than employees because that’s what they are. ‘Employees’
implies a sort of indentured servitude. If one takes into
account the global preponderance of young people in most
populations, we’d better start re-thinking our engagement with
them.

I watched in awe a BBC ‘Hard Talk’ interview featuring an
erudite middle aged Muslim professor and a young, ordinary man
from the British-Pakistani immigrant community. The discussion
centred around ‘de-radicalising’ young people. There was a low
level of rationality on the part of the young man regarding how
the British Government should ‘handle’ young Muslims. There was
a clear need for a ‘voice’ - and the expectation on the part of
the young man was that British society should adapt to the needs
of Islamic youth and that it was largely Tony Blair’s
responsibility to ‘make the first move’. This is a beautiful
illustration of precisely what older generation business
managers are facing. We can all learn from it.

The people problems occurring in most organizations come today
from the expectations gap between management and co-workers.
Erudite editor of South African newspaper Business Day, Peter
Bruce, wrote in his ‘thick end of the wedge’ column on 1st
August 2005 that South African companies have to ’somehow delink
profits and pay. In an ideal world that might be possible. But
we don’t deal in an ideal or indeed ‘real’ world. We deal in a
nebulous arena of emotions and perceptions. Rationality should
theoretically have co-workers understand that they may not have
what it takes to crack the exclusive upper echelons - which is
precisely why they’re co-workers. But they don’t see it in those
terms. They don’t factor in sophisticated fiscal literacy, the
ability (or as recently demonstrated, the inability!) to
negotiate with Unions. The capacity to develop a strategic plan
for the organization and see it through in solid tactical
implementation terms is not rated. Their thinking is a lot more
simplistic: something along the lines of, ‘You drive a fancy car
and only work eight hours a day with too many expensive
luncheons in the package. I have no car, work horrible shifts
and earn a fraction of what you do. That’s simply not fair.’ It
can be that reductionist.

What then of the young people - exemplified by the youthful
Muslim wanting the British Government to upend the ‘traditional’
UK way of life to accommodate his immigrant life-style
expectations? Management need to keep open lines of
communication. If you invite feedback, you’re going to get it -
and it could be depressing. Some of your best intended
initiatives will be trashed and ‘dissed’ - meaning disrespected.
Your most noble intentions may be misunderstood and rejected.
Your commitment will possibly be unappreciated. You need to get
representative age-compatible people to play the role of
intermediary. Give the young people the forum and the voice to
express their expectations and needs. Equally, empower them by
requiring that they come up with a variety of proposed solutions
to address those needs. Otherwise, you’re simply going to fall
into the trap of becoming a bleeding heart ‘Dear Abby’ or Ann
Landers columnist trouble-shooter.

If you’re not careful, it’s all too easy for your ‘open-door
policy’ to spawn a clutch of complaining employees. It can be
confusing when we’re faced with the ‘demands’ and seemingly very
self-centred expectations of the younger generation. Truth is,
they’re going to be running the ship (however ineffectively in
our irrelevant view) in the near future. So it makes sense to
create a rapprochement and a climate for engagement now. Let
them propose solutions. Build reviews of the solutions into your
process. Press them for refinements when those ’solutions’ are
found to be wanting, and press again until the system works. A
helpful and stress-reducing approach is to give up on the idea
that there’s only one solution because there seldom is.

Control, imposition of authority and positional power are not
the ingredients that work with young people today. They’ll
respect you for what they see you do - not for what you are by
way of title or social status. They’ll contest your
‘time-honoured’ approaches and methodology in a sometimes highly
abrasive fashion. Learn to laugh with them, at yourself and
lighten up. The world is a rapidly changing place. We have two
choices: go along for the ride, or step off the planet real
quick while you have the chance!

It happens over and over in businesses every day.

Within large companies, people are promoted to management positions to reward them for performance as individual contributors. After all, the compensation system limits reward options, so why not just promote them?

In small businesses, the owner is getting overwhelmed with all that needs to be done. They think that hiring a manager is the solution to give them a little more balance. The hunt begins!

Unless you get the RIGHT person for the position, both cases have the potential for disastrous results!

You can save yourself and others a great deal of stress and angst if you take the time to be mindful enough to make an intentional decision.

Here are 10 questions to consider BEFORE you select your new manager.

1. How will they fit into the environment?

2. How well will they develop and treat the employees?

3. How much do they really want to be responsible for getting things done through others?

4. How well will they build relationships with customers and other business partners?

5. How will they react under stress and when things get the most difficult?

6. How much initiative will they take to assess barriers and make process improvements?

7. How much flexibility will they show when the unexpected arises?

8. How responsible and accountable will they be for achieving results?

9. How committed will they be to supporting changes in business goals and directions?

10. How much initiative will they take to develop themselves?

Get creative and use these questions in a variety of ways! Suggestions:

• Fine-tune or change them so they fit you better

• Use the concepts in creating your interview questions

• Use the concepts in questions you ask reference providers

• Turn them into a rating system for narrowing down your final candidate selections

Take special notice here that all of these questions begin with HOW. Typically, it’s not WHAT the manager does that creates issues; it’s HOW he/she goes about it that can open the door to disaster. People join companies or businesses, but they leave because of their managers.

About The Author

Lora J Adrianse is the owner of Essential Connections. She is a Coach, Consultant and Facilitator who specializes in the professional development of highly motivated business professionals. She recently left a long-term corporate career to focus on her passion for helping others bring out the best in themselves. She can be reached through her website www.connectionscoach.com; coach@connectionscoach.com

When faced with a new situation; how do you react?

A friend of ours, John was at the usual Monday morning meeting in his firm when Clare from Human Resources said “We need someone to train customers and staff in the new systems. Any one got any ideas? The person we selected last week has pulled out.”

Before Clare finished the sentence John’s hand was in the air, “I can do it” came out of his mouth almost as fast as a bullet out of a gun.

The room was quiet.

Then a quiet murmur went around the room, “John?”

“He’s never trained anyone in his life”.

“Does he know the system?”

“Yes but not that well. This is going to be good.”

“He’s not even been to Uni”, said someone else. “How can he do something like this?”

“Who does he think he is? How can someone who only has hands on knowledge train others?” someone else stated.

“He’s only been working here for three years what does he know?”
What would your response be? Is your immediate response one of “Oh that won’t work in a month of Sundays” or do you say “I can see the possibilities here”.

You see, one of the biggest habits that keep us subdued and lacking energy is the habit of being a limitarian, the ability to see the negatives and the limits in new ideas rather than the possibilities. We limit ourselves. We look at the logic and decide that this will not work and can hear a million reasons resonating in our head why we ought to ditch this idea. We are brilliant at identifying why a thing or idea can’t work rather than identifying why it can.

Ask yourself:

Am I really limiting myself?

Am I stopping myself from having new experiences?

Am I stifling my energy and power?

Am I caught in the loop of anything for an easy life?

Have I developed the automatic NO habit?

If - that won’t work - is a phrase that regularly comes out of your mouth, stop for a moment and ask yourself where does it come from? What is it that makes me say no to this request, this idea, rather than yes?

What stops me from saying:

How hard can this possibly be? What are the possibilities on offer here?

You see, you are not only sabotaging someone else’s success when you adopt a limited approach to ideas you are also sabotaging your own success. If you continue with a limited way of life then gradually you will lose your love, excitement, enthusiasm and passion for life. You will become a boring, uninspiring person to be with.

However when you start believing in others and believing that things are possible, success becomes a self fulfilling prophesy and you appear to the world as someone with passion and drive and enthusiasm. Because being a possibility thinker gives you energy and confidence.

All you have to do to change your life is become an enabler of possibilities. Because,

“As the shadow follows the body, as we think, so we become”

(the Dhammapada)

Go on make your future different from your past.

Go for it!

Graham and Julie
www.desktop-meditation.com

One way of moving yourself from being a limitarian is to practice meditation. If you want to know more please go to our site at http://www.desktop-meditation.com Everything is free.

Many organizations spend huge sums of money on staff training and development and yet many times the investment does not yield the desired results.

The reason for this lack of results and what really goes wrong usually remains a mystery to most company executives. Especially where they have taken great care in selecting a top-notch expensive training outfit to carry out their staff development program.

The wrong approach starts right from the decision-making process. Somebody in management feels that, for example, the sales team is not achieving anywhere near as much sales as the competition. If there are some available figures to prove their point, the better. Naturally the first solution that comes to mind is sales training. Many times this fails miserably to have any significant effect on sales because, as is often the case, the problem is much deeper than that.

The reason why the real cause for sales not being where they should be may never be discovered in such an organization is the lack of communication in the organization. One would have thought that with all the advancements in communications today, this should be a thing of the past. Alas, communications has little to do with having access to email or personal mobile telephone numbers of all the Vice Presidents of the corporation.

It has much more to do with the culture of the company and the kind of constant effort being made to enhance communications throughout the organization. Does the organization have a system for harnessing ideas from all employees right at every level? In other words, are the channels of communication in the organization up and working? Are they a constant source of concern by senior management or do people just think about them when there is a crisis like the example of slipping sales?

This is what makes the difference. When the communication lines are truly open and working, then management has much more accurate and abundant information upon which to make decisions. And even more important, training and development will have the desired impact on everybody’s performance.

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Yorke - All Rights Reserved

Chuck Yorke is an organizational development and performance improvement specialist, trainer, consultant and speaker. His specialty is helping companies improve by tapping into the creative ideas of their workers. He is also co-author, along with Norman Bodek, of All You Gotta Do Is Ask, a book that explains how to promote large numbers of ideas from employees. Chuck may be reached at chuck@peoplekaizen.com,
http://www.peoplekaizen.com/

What are the most important things you should accomplish today? Go ahead. Make a list of your priorities and put them in order of their importance. Write down the rewards and the consequences for each one. Your list has incredible power. It helps you propel yourself towards your most desired results.

Next, take your list of what’s important today (your WIT), and immediately begin working on what’s important now (your WIN). Your WIN represents each itemized priority from your list. When you get one WIN under your belt, immediately go after the next one; and then the next one after that.

Your WIT to WIN gives you the vision, direction and momentum necessary to achieve. And, armed with a high-priority, reward-focused list, you’ll actually enjoy the passionate pursuit of your daily desires and ambitions.

Now, your priorities won’t schedule themselves. They won’t autonomously pop up on your daily agenda. Take the time to identify what’s important today and your what’s important now. Then, follow up with a strategic plan of action.

Succeed in all that you set out to achieve. Make each priority a must and commit to whatever amount of time necessary to get your priorities done. Ultimately, your WIT to WIN will lead you to experience more success than you ever dreamed.

Fran Briggs is an “motivational speaker of the inspirational kind.” She is also President of The Fran Briggs Companies, an organization which helps individuals and groups take their human potential beyond the max! Request your free, innovative successzine newsletter. It’s loaded with powerful tips and strategies for achieving more. Visit http://www.franbriggs.com and http://www.dwjd.com