Managing projects to succeed is the goal. Nobody I know in real life makes a blatant decision to fail when starting out on something new. But statistically more projects fail every year (by nearly 2/3rds) than succeed. So, clearly the key to success isn't simply to not want to fail.  You have to "not want to fail" enough that you are willing to do something about it.  In my experience, success begins with writing stuff down. Writing stuff down clearly isn't enough, but it is a big step in the right direction.

Recently I met someone who was proud of how much stuff they could seem to keep in their brain at the same time. If they had been working for a circus, you would have noticed a dizzying number of balls juggled into the air above their head. I began to probe into why they insisted on managing that enormous list of activities in their head and the response I got was the response I always get: the manager is too busy to slow down and personally write it down, which leads me to the three immutable rules of Project Management.

Rule # 1: Be Sure Stuff Gets Written Down

If you are too busy to write it down yourself, then deligate the task of writing it down.  I am curious.  If someone were to ask co-workers from my past "How many times did Steve ask you to send an email reminder, or a write-up or a summary of your conversation?" I am willing to guess that each and every person I have worked with would smile... an irritated smile. As a previous supervisor, manager and director I always insisted people be ready to take notes.  If they were invited to a meeting, then my team always showed up with notepads, laptops or some kind of recording device. If you care about being a success, then even if you are too busy to stop and write something down, be sure and delegate "writing it down" to someone.

Rule #2: Make A Plan To Review Your Notes

The only thing worse than doing a lot of writing, is doing a lot of pointless writing. When I was a manager for the first time in my career my boss hired an intern for my team (I was not a part of the hiring process, nor was I aware that I would manage that individual.) One afternoon I was simultaneously introduced to the individual as well as suddenly required to find 40 hours of resume-building work each week for the intern.  At that moment I had a full team with a dozen high cost projects and didn't really feel like babysitting.  The fact was, I was fairly new to management myself and honestly needed a babysitter watching me! Each day that the intern worked for me, my company required that she fill out a summary sheet explaining her accomplishments. And every day I got her paperwork.  But when I asked what I was supposed to do with it, I was told it was a good exercise for the intern.  Said another way, it was completely pointless.  So the moral of that story is, once you learn to start consistently writing stuff down, start to consistantly set asside time to review the notes (I recommend reviewing them at the start of every day.)

Rule #3: Take Organized Notes

Writing haphazardly is worse than not writing at all.  Imagine reading a book, and each time you hit something interesting, slap a post-it note on that page and write a number on it. Now, when you are done with the book, go back and try to find any single significant piece of content from an earlier portion of the book.  Impossible isn't it? Yes. Yes it is.  What makes that style of tagging futile is the fact that you have no way to find your tagged information again later.  This points to the fact that you need some sort of system to reference the information.  So how do you do that?  Over the years I have developed my own note taking system. For example, I typically start the top of the page of my notebook with a date.  then as I take notes I subordinate certain notes to others by indenting.  Next I put stars in the margin next to lines that are tasks and not just information.  At the end of my note taking I attempt to rank the stared items and be sure I know the due date on those items.

These three rules will get your through your week with ease.  But they are no replacements for good project management which is a more complex set of rules where task items span larger amounts of time with dependancies to other tasks or limited and/or time sensitive resources. But project management is more about managing the allocation (or rather avoiding the over allocation) of resources and tracking projects against timeline estimations.  This blog entry is about being personally successful by managing your personal effort.