When you’re neck-deep in the preliminary stages of any big project, it’s important to stay focused on what needs to happen to give it the best possible chance of success… or even a graceful failure, should events take an unexpected turn. More »
Traditionally we think of the hierarchy in the workplace as top down, but if top down is making you tear your hair out, you may benefit from managing from the bottom up—guiding your boss from the trenches. More »
If you’ve ever employed an overachiever, you know that they need special attention so that you can take advantage of what they have to offer. Constant communication works best, but be inspirational, not commandeering. Overachievers don’t like to be told what to do. Managers get the best results from them if they involve them in decisions and planning whenever possible. If there’s a problem with their work, rather than telling them how to fix it, ask them what they think the solution should be.
Praise them for a job well done, tap into their creativity, and be sincere. Remove obstacles and help pave the way to success. Weblog BNET suggests tips on how to identify these overachievers if you don’t know which of your employees have taken that initiative and how to turn them into a team player. While overachievers may demand more, their output often goes much higher than that of other employees. How to Manage Overachievers [BNET]
Free (during beta) project management web app LiquidPlanner is, at a glance, yet another competitor for Microsoft Project, but the time- and task-tracking tool takes a slightly different approach to goals and deadlines. Using what its creators dub “probabilistic” scheduling, LiquidPlanner asks its users to enter a range of dates for task completion, based on best-case and worst-case situations, and it then judges the likelihood of that and other tasks being completed by a given date. Most of the standard Project-like tools are there as well, along with some collaboration tools like a group discussion wiki and easy document sharing. I haven’t found a tool to import Project files, however, so open source solutions like OpenProj and GanttProject might be better solutions for those already set up MS-style. LiquidPlanner is free to use during its public beta and requires a sign-up for all users. LiquidPlanner [via eHub]
Kimberly Wiefling, author of Scrappy Project Management, offers some advice over at Web Worker Daily for keeping team projects together and moving forward. Her best advice, however, applies equally to personal projects: Make the goals as clear as possible. Say the goal is launching a new website. “Often, [teams]find out they don’t all have the same idea of what success is six months from now,” said Wiefling. “Is it just launching the prototype? Is it the home page works, but everything else is clunky? What about bug free. Is it full of bugs or working smoothly? How long does a page take to load? A lot of details get lost in some of the high level, ‘Hey, get the site up in six months.’” Make sure the goal looks the same to everybody.
In both full-time jobs and working freelance, I’ve found that most disastrous big-package projects fell apart precisely because the two sides of the table never agreed on goals in the first place. How do you ensure everyone you’re working with (and for) knows what the true goals are? Share your thoughts in the comments.
3 Scrappy Project Management Techniques to Master (Plus 2 Tips) [Web Worker Daily]Mac OS X only: Previously introduced money management web app, Wesabe, makes it even easier to manage your money with a free dashboard widget. The widget has two views: transactions and accounts. The accounts view (shown above) displays the balance of each account. The transactions view (not shown) displays the most recent 10 transactions. The dashboard widget makes it very easy and convenient to manage your finances at-a-glance. The Wesabe dashboard widget is a free download for Mac OS X only.
Wesabe’s Mac Dashboard Widget [Wheaties for your Wallet]A survey of 769 CEOs worldwide shows that “excellence of execution” ranks higher than profit growth as their top concern. Likely survey response! [via]
