Every morning my husband and I take a walk with the dog. It’s part of what we do to start the day well. It also includes a little coffee ritual where we stop at Coffee Tree, our favourite coffee shop, for the best coffee in Durban. We’re nearly always the first people there, and there’s a group of people who tend to arrive for a coffee to start their day at around 6.15am. It’s a great start to the day – excellent coffee and conversation and laughs with some lovely people who we really like.
One of the people we regularly meet up with is an old Durban surfer who comes for coffee at his son’s coffee shop after having gone for an early morning surf. He’s in his 70s and he lives a very simple life. He is a long-time yoga instructor who learned from one of the gurus who brought yoga to Durban in the 1980s. He’s an excellent instructor – we have a weekly private lesson with him. Like so many self-employed people, he’s apologetic about what he charges – and his charges are WAY TOO LOW!
This is just a simple example of someone who does not appreciate his worth. His free coaching session was about recognising his value and charging what he is worth. We talked about how to attach discounts to commitment – for example, he might charge you R100 per session, but if you pay for a month up front you will only pay R80 per session. We talked about how it is ok to walk away from someone who does not want to pay you what you are worth – even though it does take some courage.
I’ve had to confront this over the last year. All my clients pulled in their horns somewhat because of the impact of Covid-19 on their revenue. What would that mean for my fees? Did it mean I would have to slash them to the bone? I elected not to do this. I elected to rather adjust my fees to accommodate the fact that all my work is now online – no travel time, no plane trips, etc. It was a bit of a lean time, but if I had slashed my fees, how would I ever get back to charging what I am worth?
It’s a bit like accepting a lower salary than what you are worth because it gets you in the door, and you have been promised that your salary will be adjusted after a period of time – once they’ve seen what you can do. How many of you have fallen for that? If you start on a salary that is lower than you deserve, or lower than the going rate for the job, you nearly never catch up. It takes courage to stand firm – what if they choose another candidate instead? Well they might; and they might not. I know it is a tough job market, but I would still recommend that you stand your ground if you have done your homework and you know what you should be paid.
And what about relationships? Whether we are speaking of a love relationship, a friendship or your relationship with your manager, you need to be clear on your value and on what you deserve. Do you deserve to be insulted? Do you deserve to be fobbed off? Do you deserve to be neglected or ignored?
Let’s flip the questions. How do you deserve to be treated? Do you deserve respect? Do you deserve to be heard? Do you deserve time and consideration?
How easy or difficult was it for you to answer these questions in the affirmative and with conviction?
If you really struggled to say “Yes” to these questions, my inclination would be to encourage you to embark on a journey with a therapist – you really cannot stand for what you deserve if you don’t believe that you deserve. There is a healing journey to take first.
However, if you were able to say “Yes” with conviction, your challenge will be to start the process of asking for what you deserve and standing your ground. It might be useful for you to figure out what you will do if you don’t get what you want. In Negotiations, this is called a BATNA – your best alternative to a negotiated agreement. It is enormously empowering to figure our what you will do if you cannot get what you deserve. Will you walk away from the relationship? Will you start looking for another job? Will you impose some other consequence – such as being unavailable in certain ways? It speaks to a quotation that was shared with me today: "Find the courage to leave the table if respect is no longer being served" (Tene Edwards).
“You teach people how to treat you. You either teach people to treat you with dignity and respect, or you don't. This means you are partly responsible for the mistreatment that you get at the hands of someone else. You shape others' behaviour when you teach them what they can get away with and what they cannot.” Dr. Phil McGraw.
How do you need to stand up for yourself? Who needs to be taught to treat you differently? How will you teach them? Who do you see settling for less than they deserve? How will you help them?
Know your worth, expect the best and don’t settle for less.

Life is an echo.
What you send out comes back.
What you sow you reap.
What you give you get.
What you see in others exists in you.

In this video I discuss how you can harness the reciprocity of the universe. It all starts with you.

​It is my very firm belief that we lead one conversation at a time – because leadership is relational.  Everything we do in the working environment is with or through people – so via our relationships - and relationships are built one conversation at a time There are dozens of occasions every day that are an opportunity to exercise leadership – and having a tricky and courageous conversation with a colleague ranks as an excellent example of a leadership conversation.
I believe a conversation is courageous when the content may be hard to hear, must be heard, and the reaction might be strongly negative or emotional. A courageous conversation is one in which something important needs to be communicated to a team member/colleague because it relates to their effectiveness and success – and not communicating it increases the likelihood that this team member/colleague will get themselves into difficulties that could be prevented. In other words, something must be said AND they may react badly. Nevertheless, a conversation must be had.
Most often, people avoid such conversations for one or more of 4 reasons: (i) because they don’t want to hurt their colleague; (ii) because they want to avoid unpleasantness; (iii) because they simply don’t care enough about their colleague to say what must be said; or (iv) because they think it will be a waste of time. All of these reasons are problematic.
When you do not want to hurt or upset a colleague, your empathy is going to harm your colleague because avoidance of the conversation means that they will not hear something that will help them. When you want to avoid unpleasantness for yourself, you are protecting yourself by being insincere. And if you simply don’t care for your colleague enough to have the conversation (or you think it will be a waste of time), this is actually passive-aggressive behaviour – hanging a team member out to dry, when something could have been done.
I’m a big fan of Kim Scott’s book, Radical Candor. She teaches that truly courageous conversations require two things: firstly, that you genuinely care about the best interests and well-being of the other; and secondly, that you challenge them directly in terms that are clear and unequivocal.
Let’s start with the first part. Do you care enough about the best interests and well-being of your team member or colleague (and the team) to have a conversation that makes you feel uncomfortable? If you do not care enough to do this, then you have some personal work to do. Your job as a leader is to set an appropriate example with them team, creating psychological safety, an atmosphere of mutual care and concern, and a climate of candour. You MUST care. You will never be a leader if you don’t care. If you don’t care, you run the risk of either sharing feedback in an obnoxiously aggressive manner – or not sharing it at all.
Once you are comfortable that you do genuinely care about the well-being of the team member/colleague and the team, you can prepare using the following questions:

1. What do you want your team member/colleague to know and understand? How will you say it?
2. What could you say to your team member/colleague before you start that might make them receptive to hearing what you need to say? (It is often useful to set a courageous conversation up with something like “I need to talk to you about something that you may find difficult to hear. I want you to know that I am sharing it with you because I care about you and your success. Could I ask you to hear me out to the end before you respond?)
3. How can you be part of the solution? How can you be supportive?
4. What strong reactions do you expect from your team member/colleague? How will you deal with these if they happen?
5. What are your own possible reactions and feelings? What will you do to keep these in check?
6. When will you have this conversation?

Once you have had the conversation, it would be useful to do a personal review of how it went:

1. Did you achieve what you set out to do?
2. How was your message received?
3. What did you do well?
4. What might you do differently another time?
5. How did you leave things with your colleague?
6. Are you happy with that? If not, what will you do?

Finally, give yourself a pat on the back for caring enough to have a difficult conversation.

In my social media posts this March, I am thinking about the theme of “What Goes Around Comes Around”, and it is not really about karma. It is more about this: “Life will let you get away with something for a while, but sooner or later, you will pay the price. Everything you do in life causes the effects that you experience. When you get the bill, be prepared to pay.” Iyanla Vanzant.

This is as true of the things we do as it is of the things we neglect. There are too many things we take for granted:

• When we’re young we take for granted that our bodies are strong and will always be so;
• We get so comfortable in a relationship with a partner or spouse that we neglect to give it specific attention;
• We take it for granted that our team members will pick up the slack when team members or the team’s leader are laid low by a virus or an accident, or go on leave;
• We neglect to stay sharp in our field of expertise because, after all, we are the experts;
• We eat junk and drink too much despite the fact that we don’t feel too sharp in the mornings;
• We turn the radio up to drown the sound of that strange whine in the engine;
• We allow ourselves to slip (back) into bad work habits, not planning the day or the week, reacting as things happen, taking unscheduled interruptions and hopping between multiple tasks when we know that this just doesn’t work.

Neglecting these things always demands that you pay a price.

Your body will let you down when you most need to be strong. When a serious operation or illness is going to demand great strength from you in order to recover, it is too late.

How many of you have had the experience of coasting along doing what you do best, only to realise one day that what you do best is no longer what your clients actually want or need? Or that the world works differently and needs you to work differently too? I think we all had that experience last year. I had to learn to do a lot of things differently in an online world when I had previously been able to rely on my in-person presence, charm and flair for flying by the seat of my pants!

Too much junk food and booze will affect your mental sharpness! It will also exact a physical toll that you will pay sooner or later.

Slipping into bad work habits has all sorts of consequences:

• You feel as if you never have enough time;
• Your work days are unsatisfying;
• You neglect some team members in favour of others, or neglect them all equally;
• You always have multiple uncompleted tasks on your desks;
• You feel stressed, lose your temper and eat badly;
• You neglect yourself and your personal relationships.

Sooner or later people who feel neglected (and perhaps even abused) will turn away – and they may do so when you need them most.

Team members who are taken for granted, who don’t get a thank you when they have dug you out of a hole AGAIN, will go somewhere else, or just disengage and show up in body but not in soul.

It was Stephen Covey who taught me that relationships are like a bank account – you need to make regular deposits because one day you will need to make a withdrawal. When you do make a withdrawal, will you go into overdraft or will the relationship be able to afford it?

I encourage you to think about what you may have been neglecting:

• Who has not had the time and attention they need and deserve?
• What bad habits have you allowed to develop?
• How have you neglected your physical health?
• How have you neglected your mental health?
• What areas of learning do you keep meaning to get to sometime?
• How have you neglected your network?

If you end up with the proverbial shopping list, then that is a wakeup call in itself. However, I don’t recommend that you try and pick off your shopping list all in one go. Rather review your list and decide which are your priorities because their neglect has had (or will soon have) a negative impact on your values and your quality of life. Then make some specific decisions about what you will do.

• When will you get back to the gym?
• When and how will you relax and unwind for an hour or so?
• How will you get time with those key people into your schedule?
• How will you show your appreciation for the people who are always there to back you in life and in work?
• When will you spend time reading every day?

Of course, all of these require that you exercise some discipline in your work habits and routines – or how on earth will you fit them in? This is an opportunity to get off the treadmill of life and work, take stock and remind yourself of what needs to be nurtured and cared for in your long-term interests.
​
Oh! And get the car serviced!
 
 

The minds is a faithful servant but a tyrannical master!

I believe that we need to have the self-discipline to turn our minds into faithful servants. This relates to both our thoughts and our words. We need to think positive, generous thoughts about life, about ourselves, and about other people. 

Why? What if life really does suck? What if other people really are incompetent idiots? 

The simple answer is because it is good for you. It is good for your sense of humour. It is good for your mental health. It is good for your relationships. It is good for the quality of your work interactions. It predicts better outcomes than negative, uncharitable thinking.

In this video, I offer a few ideas that will improve the quality of your thoughts and words.

Firstly, let's talk about words. Consider that just because it passes through your mind it doesn't mean it should pass through your lips. Just because you think something doesn't mean you should say it. It is worth taking this advice: Before you say something, ask yourself it is true, is it kind, is it necessary, is it helpful?

And now to your thoughts. Often our thoughts are based on untested assumptions. An event happens. We make a judgment about what that event means or what it says about ourselves. We look for evidence that we were right - and what you look for tends to be what you find. This confirms and embeds our assumptions and we treat them as truths.

However, we could do something different. This comes from Nancy Kline.

1. When something sets you off, describe what happened.
2. Ask yourself: What am I assuming about what this event means?
3. Subject this assumption to the test:
            - Is this logical? Does it make sense based on what I know about myself, the world and the other person?
            - Is it factual? Do I have evidence that my assumption is actually a face?
            - Is it based on a positive philosophical choice? This is the choice to believe that most people are good, most                    people are doing their best most of the time, and most often things work out.
4. If you have answered No to any of the questions in 3 above, ask yourself: What would be a more generous (and liberating) assumption?

Now go and live your life - after all if an assumption is just an assumption, isn't it better for it to be a more positive one?

Every month-end in nearly every department in every organisation I have worked in and across industries you will witness what I call "Month-end Madness".

My observation is that this is usually at least in part because we have allowed bad habits to prevail and now tell ourselves that this is just how it is in our industry. I don't think you should just accept this as normal. I know that some clients only want to be invoiced at month end, but this is not an overwhelming majority by any means.
During this last week of the month, I invite you to go through it mindfully.

• Pay attention to your activities.
• Ask yourself which of these activities could have been done earlier in the month.
• Entertain the idea of weekly "mini-month-ends".
• Decide what you wish to do differently in your business next month.

Once your month-end madness is done, meet with your team and plan for next month:

• Decide what you will do earlier in the month
• Decide what you will do at least weekly
• Try it out once, review and make changes to your plans, and then try it out again.

My bet is that you can definitely have greater month-end sanity - which is positive for everyone. It reduces stress and contributes to the resilience of the team. After all, the more organised and disciplined your team, the greater its resilience!

A resilient team is one which easily adapts to change and embraces that challenges that the world of work presents them with. In a resilient team, there is a high level of self-management, people are self-motivated to achieve work objectives, and they strive for continuous improvement. Resilient teams have eight key characteristics:

1. Coping Ability
Perseverance and inner strength mark the resilient team. Challenges are seen as opportunities to grow. Members believe the best in each other in spite of weaknesses, and recall the many examples of endurance and success in the past. They work through communication impasses and try alternative approaches to work when necessary. They also minimize distractions to stay focused on their work, and regularly use resources outside of the team for ongoing training and coaching. 
When times are tough and the pressure is on, it is easy to get irritated with one another. When you notice this in your team, it can be really helpful to see it as a sign that the team needs a break from their everyday pressure. Great examples include:

• Take an afternoon off together to do something that includes everyone;
• Have lunch together away from your desks and chat about what is happening for the team;
• Start the day with something that makes people laugh. Laughter is great for resilience because it gives us a boost of endorphins, and that fosters trust and closeness.

2. Commitment
Aim at everything and you'll hit nothing. Resilient teams have specific goals, clear strategies, and defined relationships into which they invest themselves. Members are resolutely dedicated to each other’s well-being and to accomplishing the team's purpose. Members feel like they belong to and can influence their group. The goals of the team are highly valued and prioritized, yet with due regard for members' responsibilities to family, friends, the local community, and other groups.
When things are crazy it is easy for the team to get scattered and for them to lose sight of what is important – each other, the most important goals, their purpose. It is important for the leader to notice this. Get everyone off the treadmill for a short while and do a bit of a reflection. This is one of my favourite agendas for this:

1. What are we trying to achieve?
2. What is actually happening?
3. What is working well?
4. What isn’t?
5. What are the lessons to be learned?
6. What do we need to do now?

This is such an energising process because it gives the team a sense that it is making progress and that only small adjustments will be needed to create some calm.
​
3. Appreciation
Team members regularly and easily express their appreciation for each other. Thanking one-another and acknowledging each other's contributions add much to group cohesion. Appreciation is both an attitude and a behaviour, so cultivate both!
The leader sets the tone here. If you are consistently appreciative, and cultivate an environment where appreciation is a two-way street, you will ensure that your people always feel valued.

4. Communication
Members of strong teams have good communication skills, including conflict resolution. They listen well and can empathize by reflecting back what they hear, and they validate others' feelings. They value self-awareness, taking time to step back and reflect in order to step forward and connect with others. Genuine efforts are made to explore and relate together in culturally-sensitive ways. There are also clear written and verbal channels for exchanging information and updates about life and work. 
This is another category of behaviour where the leader models the way. It is important to become aware of your communication habits and consciously work on being a good all round communicator.

5. Time Together
Teams need quality time together, and a lot of it. This is especially true during significant transitions: when teams bring in new members, during crisis situations, or during the early stages of team life. Intimacy with a few members but congeniality with all is a reasonable goal. Resiliency also results from periodically having "fun" times together - simply enjoying one another's company - plus from building mutually supportive friendships. 
Remote working has created real challenges for teams to have time together. If you do spend time in the office, be mindful of creating opportunities for the team to spend time together as a team. This is an even greater challenge when you are working remotely, but it is important to have team get togethers where you can chat, share, laugh and be more relaxed. Perhaps once a week you “have lunch” together in a Teams meeting; or Friday afternoon “drinks”. It is worth the effort.

6. Understanding
Henri Nouwen observed that one of life's hardest realities is that "love and wounds are never separated". Healthy teams will experience tensions and hurts. There are times when our darker sides will emerge. And there are times when our just being different will create friction. To lessen the impact, team members look at their different "styles" and preferences: personality, leadership, decision making, learning, work, communication, and spirituality. Focus is more on "fitting together" than on identifying someone's weaknesses. Team members thus try to genuinely understand and accept one other's "way of being", while also being free to give one another feedback. They are able to let go of things and move on rather than bearing grudges.
I believe it is really valuable for a team to take the time to know and understand one another. You can use personality profiles as a basis for understanding one another’s styles, preferences and sensitivities. I also love the idea of everyone writing and sharing their “Personal User Manual”. First of all it creates self-awareness as a product of answering the questions. Then it becomes something you can use to help team members understand each other better.

7. Structure
Resilience requires regimen: clear roles for leaders and other members, well-defined decision making methods, agreed-upon accountability and conflict resolution guidelines, and in many cases a written agreement or "memo of understanding". Everyone has designated and chosen responsibilities, so people know how they fit and where they belong. Structure brings a sense of security.
Clear indicators that you need to pay attention to structure include:

• Disagreement about roles and responsibilities;
• Missed deadlines and rolling over of action items from one meeting to another;

These are indicators that you need to step in and create certainty and clarity by making sure roles, responsibilities and deliverables are clear.
 
8. Learning
Resilient teams are learning teams. They take the time to learn from both their mistakes and their successes. When they address problems, they do not look for blame, they look for real causes – and they address these causes. They share ideas with each other and regularly brainstorm options for doing things better.
Once again I draw on my favourite review method outlined in Number 2 above.
Also, when things go wrong (as they sometimes do) it is helpful to take the time to explore:

• What happened?
• What made this possible?
• What do we need to change to fix this for the future – so that it won’t happen again.

 
Challenge

1. Share this article with your team.
2. Ask them to assess how resilient they think they are as a team.
3. Discuss this as a team and make some decisions about what you collectively will do to enhance the team’s resilience.

"Life is difficult.
This is a great truth. One of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult - once we truly know and accept it - then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters." (M. Scott Peck, From The Road Less Travelled).
 
We know that life and the world of work can be difficult and stressful – sometimes it seems that the only thing that changes is the source of the stress.
 
Ensuring your own resilience is the only way to weather the storm. You need to be resilient for yourself, for your family, for your team and for your business. The key to this is self-care.
 
Self-care is not some limp-wristed waste of time that some people might have the time to indulge. It is your insurance policy for when things get particularly tough.
 
You cannot give what you do not have!
 
Here are some self-care practices that sustain your resilience. Perhaps there are one or two that you can use:

1. Mind your mind.
When life becomes stressful it is easy to allow our minds to take over and torment us with our fears. Resilient people take charge of their thoughts and deliberately do some of the following:

• They keep their sense of humour and find something amusing about their experience;
• They know that recreation is not a waste of time, and allow themselves to “play” at times that they have set aside especially for this;
• They avoid the company of people who increase their stress or drain their energy;
• They do work that they like and can get some pleasure from;
• They acknowledge that what cannot be cured must be endured;
• They don’t take life too seriously;
• They are objective about criticism they receive from others;
• They know that there is always someone worse off than themselves.

2. Pay attention to what you put in your mouth.
When life becomes stressful it is even more important to choose foods that energize and uplift you rather than those that make you feel sluggish.

• Boost your magnesium intake. It’s good for balancing blood-sugar levels and maintaining healthy blood pressure.
• Don’t drink coffee before 10am. Having a hit of rocket fuel first thing becomes another form of stress.
•  Never skip meals. Your blood-sugar levels will crash.
• Eat oats for breakfast. It’s still the best thing you can eat if you want a stress-free day.

3. Find ways to reduce stress at work.

• Be reasonable with your ambition:
• Remember that you don’t have to be a winner all the time;
• Let go of your need to be a perfectionist – sometimes good enough is good enough!
• Learn to forgive yourself (and others!);
• Be realistic in how much time you allocate to any task – they always take longer than you expect;
• Learn to say “No” – even if it is “No, not now. I can help you later”; or “No, not me. Why don’t you ask so-and-so”; or “No, not this way. I can do it that way.”
• Set aside some time each day when you are not available for phone calls or visitors;
• Delegate!
• Learn to tolerate mistakes.

4. Take care of your health and fitness.

• Breathe! When you breathe deeply your heart cannot race.
• Carry yourself upright and watch your posture – lifting yourself will lift your spirits.
• Move! Exercise for at least 20 minutes a day.
• If you need medical help, get it – and take the medication!

5. Avoid stress at home.

• Avoid bringing work home – actual work as well as work-based emotions. Use your drive home to leave the office behind. If you work from home, take 15 minutes to “decompress” – take a walk in the garden or around the block by yourself and mentally leave the office behind;
• Don’t take any office unpleasantness home;
• Do not continue to play the role of the boss at home. Play your more appropriate roles – mother/father or husband/wife;
• Avoid allowing discussions to turn into arguments, and always patch up a tiff before going to sleep;
• Appreciate the small kindnesses you are shown at home and ignore the minor irritations;
• lan your budget and enjoy living within your means.

Are there any tips here that might be useful for you? What specifically will you do to build your own resilience?

"The key is not to prioritise what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities." – Stephen Covey

It has been said that if you really want to know what someone's values and priorities are, check how they spend their time. How you spend your time is more powerful and compelling than anything you can say - because what you do shouts far more loudly.

Your priorities are determined by your key goals or objectives - whether they are tangible work deliverables, projects to execute, family goals, relationship goals or any other goals that matter to you. If it really matters to you, it MUST make it onto your schedule.

Anyone in a leadership role has their lives run according to their calendar, so your calendar is the most powerful tool you have in managing your priorities - it enables you to set out time to pay attention to your most important priorities. What goes in your calendar is what goes on in your life.

So how do you make sure that you actually give the requisite time to your most critical priorities? I find that the best way to do this is to take charge of your calendar. Even if you have an amazing PA or Executive Assistant, you must be the boss of your calendar. Either alone, or in discussion with your PA, you must decide what types of activities go into your calendar because they speak to your priorities, what activities are declined or delegated, and what activities are up for discussion.

As a business leader, your priorities will be determined by the activity''s impact on:

1. Your team and their ability to do their work well and deliver results;
2. Your customers, whether internal or external and their willingness and ability to "buy what you are selling" (and you are always selling - read "To Sell is Human" by Daniel Pink);
3. Your shareholders or principals - that means your manager, your board or your actual shareholders.

And if you follow the leadership principles of Richard Branson, these priorities are IN THAT ORDER.

I bet that made some of you cringe! Am I really saying that your managers are lower down the pecking order than your team? Yes, I am. How you manage that is a different story.

Generally, human beings think more clearly and are more energetic in the mornings (yes, I know there is a significant minority of night owls, but this is a general rule). That means that activities that speak to your priority areas should happen earlier in the day, with your lower priorities happening later. There may also be a case to be made for relational activities to happen later in the day when the more urgent "tasks" have been taken care of - since relational activities are best served when one is feeling relaxed.

The key to making sure your priorities see the light of day is in your planning:

1. Your annual strategising and planning sets your priorities in terms of projects and key deliverables, as well as outlining the activities that must take place in order to make sure that consistent action is taken. It probably also sets out the regular meetings that must take place on a weekly or monthly or quarterly basis in order to assure progress.
2. Your monthly planning (sometime in the last week of the month) sets out what must be achieved during that month in order to make good progress, as well as the specific activities and meetings that must get into your calendar other than those regular meetings you set out as part of your annual plan;
3. Your weekly plan sets out how you will carve out time in between your meetings to actually do the work that you must do in order to do your part in taking care of your priorities. It is also your time to look at where you can slot in those activities that are not key to your priorities, but which are important to a colleague or team member.
4. Your daily plan really just reviews your plan for the week and may involve moving things around to accommodate the unexpected.

Your team members and colleagues can help you in staying focused on YOUR priorities by understanding what they need to to do get some of your time and attention, and in order to help you manage your calendar appropriately. It is useful for you and for them to ask the following questions when new issues come across your desks (tasks, requests, meetings, etc.)

1. Which of MY priorities does this speak to?
2. Based on the answer to the 1st question, MUST it be done? Why?
3. If yes, MUST it be done by me?
4. If NO, by whom?
5. If YES, then when.

Too many of us end up being victims to our calendar, but it is worth considering this:
Your calendar can either be a tyrannical master or a faithful servant. You decide.

This is the time of year (I’m writing this in January 2021) when many of us turn to our plans. There is a psychological angle to it – it just seems to make sense that we set our objectives/goals/targets at this time of the year. (From now on I’m only going to call them goals). These goals tend to be quite  big “projects”, and how to achieve them can be quite overwhelming. Planning definitely involves a lot of thinking because you need to figure out the following before you can set your plan down:

• What are the specific measurables/indicators of success for each of your goals?
• What are the “mini-projects” that will contribute to the achievement of each objectives/goals/targets?
• In what sequence must each of these mini-projects be addressed, or can they be addressed simultaneously?
• What actions make up each mini-project, and in what order must these actions be taken?
• What are the timelines, deadlines and due dates?

The overwhelm is not just because the achievement of the goals seems to involve to much, but also because there will overlaps in terms of the timing of various actions. We can’t address our goals sequentially. We have to address them simultaneously, and then it becomes difficult to keep all the right balls in the air.
Then on top of these goals (which are often unique or special projects), we also have our daily responsibilities and tasks: the routine work that must be done as a Marketing Executive or Sales Manager or Divisional Director or CFO. It is useful to also consider these in the context of projects. For example, if the CFO thinks of the generation of the monthly management reports as a project, it becomes possible to create a monthly project plan that ensures that everything that needs to be done in order to deliver the management reports on time takes place as and when it should.
Many of the management guru’s whose work I’ve read or followed over the years advocate treating ones job responsibilities as a series of projects: they each have required outcomes (goals) that are measurable; they each consist of a series of mini-projects which each contribute to the whole; and each mini-project consists of a series of tasks that must be actioned in a particular sequences and according to particular timing. Projectizing every aspect of your job and planning properly using one of the many (free) planning tools available helps you to create a roadmap for the year and makes it possible for you to keep many balls in the air. They ensure that you don’t fall down on follow-up and that you never miss a deadline.
Why do I advocate using a specific planning tools?

1. Because the use of these tools “forces” a level of rigour that a blank piece of paper or Excel Spreadsheet will not do – they take you through a process that reduces the risk of leaving out important thinking steps;
2. These project tools enable you to update project progress in real time;
3. Most of these tools enable your collaborators (your team members or colleagues) to update their own contributions and be reminded of their own responsibilities and deadlines;
4. These tools make it possible for you and your team (and even your manager) to have a visual scoreboard or tracker that gives a sense of where you are in real time;
5. Modification to the plan is easy because automation takes out much of the donkey-work involved in updating the details on the plan.

Success and consistent discipline are simply indivisible. Using a project planning tool fosters so many important disciplines that are essential to success:

1. Once again, the rigour that is ensured when you follow the process that the tool takes you through;
2. Secondly, you can drive the project because you can see where you are;
3. It is possible for you to meet with your team around the scoreboard (physically or virtually) in order to review progress and assess every aspect of the plan;
4. Team members and other collaborators can manage themselves using the scoreboard;
5. It gives everyone a sense that progress is being made consistently – which is an essential component of real engagement.

Many organisations own and make available to their employees a variety of planning tools. The challenge is to get people to use them as they are intended. The kiss of death is for them to be treated as “admin”. Nobody loves “admin”. The best energy “admin” can expect to get is that people go through the motions. When people use planning tools as a “way of working” – something that helps one to do good work and stay on top of things; something that assures success rather than something that “inspects” your work – you have a better chance of success.
This means that your planning activities should be fun:

• Take the team out of the office and away from the phones;
• Do the work in a room that has windows and a view! You are looking into the future. How can you do this when all you can see is four walls?
• Take regular breaks – during those breaks do something energizing (a yoga class; a trust walk; some stretching; a team exercise that makes people laugh). Drinking coffee and eating muffins JUST DOESN’T DO IT;
• If you are planning a really big project, do your planning over time – don’t try and do it in one exhausting hit.

Furthermore, monitoring your progress should be fun:

• Your scoreboard should be visually appealing;
• Progress must be acknowledged;
• Obstacles must be addressed and problems solved – quickly and as a team;
• Celebrate successes!

So what project planning tools would I recommend? Here is a great link that will help you to find tools that suit your needs:

• https://www.getapp.com/p/sem/project-management-software?t=Top+Planning+Software&camp=adw_search&utm_content=g&utm_source=ps-google&utm_campaign=COM_MISC_Desktop_BE-Project_Management&utm_medium=cpc&account_campaign_id=1509234447&account_adgroup_id=56224923741&ad_id=476115059493&utm_term=planning+tool&matchtype=e&gclid=CjwKCAiAxp-ABhALEiwAXm6IyT9xdXljFNMmFIGeque-mVpoEa6cMM3xciqOwC2j-BTn8-1-XAKShRoChZ0QAvD_BwE

This link will take you to a comparison of some of these tools:

• https://www.capterra.com/sem-compare/project-management-software?gclid=CjwKCAiAxp-ABhALEiwAXm6Iydm5TLSiIKvJltFVXhnH7kjJD9Mo9aVbljsQrjZ1-_l_YY26P72XEhoCmAAQAvD_BwE

 
To me, the specific tool you use is not important. What is important is that you use something that follows a thorough process, is easy to revise when things change, can be updated in real time, allows the whole team to collaborate and shows you how you are progressing in real time.