Managing Execution 1

Monday, 7:40

That day is a normal day, and it happens because you are good at what you do. The skill you bring to managing projects puts you at the center of problem solving for those around you. If you don’t protect your time, those problems can eat up all of the time you need to do the most important work of the project.

You are not alone feeling this way. Researchers shadowed information workers through their real workdays and found that people held one thread of work for an average of 11 minutes before switching to something else, and interrupted work came back an average of 25 minutes later. Put simply, if you don’t protect your time, interruptions every 15 minutes can quickly become the norm.

Work routes to you because you resolve it. The volume is evidence the project needs you.

The same volume is why the work that most needed your attention this week never got done. Nobody chose to skip it. There was simply no version of the week where it was identified, prioritized, protected, and completed.

Now Tuesday. Your Principal in Charge asks how Oakhaven is going, and you say:

“It’s going well.”

How do you know?

The answer usually assembles itself out of the inbox, the last team meeting, and the sense that everybody is busy. The team worked hard this week. That is true every week, but hard work alone says nothing about progress. Busy and on track separate slowly, and nothing tells you the moment they become out of sync.

Both of those weeks have one cause:

Nothing was decided before the week started, and nothing was compared after it ended.

By the end of Module 8, you'll be able to:

• ✓Run the four line comparison on a live project and name every gap it finds.
• ✓Route each gap. Move on, carry it as a Priority, or escalate it now.
• ✓Build next week's PM Plan across three horizons with all 7 fields filled.
• ✓Put every Priority on your calendar with a day and a time before Friday ends.

Friday decides Monday

Successful Project Managers decide the week on the Friday before it starts. They look ahead, identify what needs their attention, and build the next week with intention, while it is still in front of them.

That habit holds up under study. Research shows that proactive time management practice tracks with job performance, and the effect was stronger in the recent studies than in the older ones. This means that the better you are at time management, the better you perform, and the effects are more important today than they were 10 years ago.

Your Friday planning process does 2 jobs, and the order matters.

It compares the week that just ended to the plan, then it builds the week that starts Monday.

The comparison comes first, because what it identifies becomes next week’s priorities.

The four questions

Every Friday, before you close the week, ask four questions about the project in front of you.

Those are simple questions. Answering them honestly is what changes Monday. Decide what you are going to do about each answer and then structure your approach for next week.

The comparison

What does the question “how is the project going?” truly ask?

Behind “how is the project going” sits a sharper question.

How does the project compare to the plan?

Progress only carries meaning against an expectation, and Module 5 built the expectation for this phase. If you do not have a plan to compare against, any assessment of progress is subjective.

Planning is not just for show. Research shows that comparing progress against a plan improves performance, even when actual performance drifts from the plan. The act of reviewing against a concrete, planned checkpoint is what enhances performance.

Across 138 experiments and almost 20,000 people, people who monitored progress toward a goal were more likely to reach it, and the effect was larger when the check was written down. This is true of projects.

Writing down where the project should be and then writing down where it is at a given progress checkpoint, by itself, improves performance.

The key is to then turn any gap you identify into action, and it starts with the way you proactively set next week’s priorities.

Two plans, four lines

The plan that belongs to you

The project already has a plan. The Project Plan shows when the work happens, the design milestones, the submittals, the reviews, and the dates the team is building toward.

You need a second plan that plans your specific work. Call it the PM Plan. It shows when you personally will perform the leadership and management actions that keep the Project Plan's work moving.

The Project Plan belongs to the project. The PM Plan belongs to you.

Build it across three horizons and scan all 3 every Friday. Most weeks the first horizon fills and the other 2 hold 1 or 2 items each, and those items are the ones that stop the project from arriving unprepared.

Seven fields, and a time on the calendar

For every item that needs your attention next week, fill in 7 fields.

Answer those 7 and a priority has turned into a plan. If you cannot complete every field, the plan is not finished.

The fourth field carries more weight than it appears. Across multiple tests of goal follow through, adding a specific when and where produced a medium to large gain in the number of people who did the thing they intended. So put the work on your calendar.

If you need a conversation Monday morning, schedule it. If you need 30 minutes Thursday to prepare a client update, protect the time. If someone owes the project a decision Friday, schedule the follow up before Friday arrives.

Four lines the plan from Module 5 already set.

For any week of a phase, the Project Plan already answers four questions. Each one is a line you compare against, and each answer already exists in a document you own.

Planning quality sets what this review during the project costs you.

With a good plan every line is a lookup and the whole review takes minutes. With a weak plan every line becomes an investigation, and investigations don't get run every week.

The plan sets the price of monitoring, and the higher the price, the less often the review happens at all.

One Friday on Oakhaven

The routine runs in 5 steps, in this order, once a week. Give it 30 minutes.

The review

Friday, end of week 7. A 13 week phase, 280,000 dollars of fee. The week 6 milestone, the estimate reconciled to the 40 million dollar construction budget, happened on time, and nothing feels wrong.

Walk the four lines and ask the same thing each time. What must be true to prove progress?

Work. The plan says the estimate package is closed and the elevations package is running. To prove it, the reconciled estimate exists as a finished document and you have seen it. Someone telling you a package is finished tells you what they intend, and the document tells you where the project is. The estimate holds up. Elevations has not started. First gap.

Time. Every active package should sit where the schedule says. Elevations sits on the critical path, and the week 11 submittal absorbs the delay only if the package starts Monday. Same gap, now with a date on it, and recoverable this week.

Effort. Hours spent should match what the budget planned for the work completed. One package is consuming more than its line allowed. Nobody decided that. It accumulated one honest timesheet at a time. Second gap.

Fee earned. The curve says about half the fee by the end of this week. The completed work says a little less. Third gap, and a small one.

The diagnosis takes 3 sentences. Elevations are late. One package is burning hours faster than its budget. Earned fee is slightly behind the curve.

Every gap gets routed the same way, and the route is 3 questions.

Whatever the outcome, it lands in the project controls. A changed date goes into the schedule. A decision goes into the Decision Log. A new exposure goes into your risk tracking.

The plan

The elevations start is a gap you can close yourself, so it goes on next week's PM Plan as a Priority with all 7 fields filled.

Two more entries come out of the three horizon scan, and neither one is urgent yet. Karen Whitfield's next City Council briefing is 3 weeks away, so you block 30 minutes Thursday to start the progress narrative. The owner furnished dispatch system is still unresolved and design work ahead depends on it, so you name who can move it and schedule the follow up.

Monday, already decided

Monday arrives. Same inbox, same meetings, different outcome. Your first conversation is already scheduled. Thursday's client preparation already has time protected. The dispatch follow up already has an owner.

The plan will change. A client call creates a new priority. A technical issue needs attention. When something new arrives, decide what it replaces.

Timing is what the review buys you. Found in week 7, the late elevations package costs a Monday conversation with the team. Found in week 11, it costs another person, or overtime, or both. Early discovery buys options, and by week 11 those options have expired.

Put it to work