How patient are you when immersed in the challenge
of a high priority assignment with an urgent deadline? If you’ve ever been part
of a project development team, you are well acquainted with some version of the
following interconnected stages of the project cycle.
1. Generation
of focused vision and goals
2. Detail
project scope
3. Estimate
resources – financial and human
4. Map
out strategic plan
5. Execute
tactics
6. Review,
assess and adjust
You know the importance of having a clear, focused
and realistically challenging plan that includes detailed aspects of essential
elements, a viable budget, a strategic plan with accountabilities, a timeline with
execution deadlines, a means to review/assess progress and a system of incorporating
project adjustment strategies.
Although each fundamental stage is critical for
success, those requiring the most patience are stages one and six. Many
projects ultimately fail to produce desired and needed results due to a lack of
focused and clearly detailed goals. If you don’t know what success will look
like then it’s easy to fall into what I refer to as “hamster wheel syndrome,”
the illusion of forward momentum. If you do not include a dedicated review,
assessment and adjustment stage, your team may be executing tactics that are no
longer effective for a changing economic and organizational landscape; the
result when this occurs is that precious resources – financial and human – are unproductively
utilized and depleted.
The attribute of patience is critical for generating
a clear, realistic and ambitious set of project goals, a viable strategy and
optimal resources for desired results. Patience requires structuring regular
time to evaluate project relevance, focus, team engagement/motivation and
adherence to critical tracking deadlines. Patience can be challenging when your
project team is pressured to produce immediate results. I propose that when your
team is intensely feeling the pressure to speed up, that is precisely the key time
to step back, review, assess, and adjust the project vision, goals and process;
utilizing patience at this time helps ensure the project remains cohesive, relevant
and on track. Where could embodying the quality of patience empower you and
your team to slow down in service of facilitating optimal results?
Janet
For related posts, check out the following links:
Thinking Small for Big Results
You have such an interesting blog. Thanks for sharing, I enjoyed reading your posts. All the best for your future blogging journey.
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