IMPROVE YOUR ANNUAL RESOLUTION RESULTS WITH A SOLID PROJECT MANAGEMENT SKILLS BY MAXWELL OWOLADE

You may have noticed it, your colleague will turn to you and promised something good they will like to start doing next week, next month or even next year. You commended them for taking such a bold step, then next week, next month and the new year, comes around, nothing changed!

Perhaps, you are even acknowledging it “you are the one in the spotlight now” that I am referring to, in this opening parallel. We often call it new resolution. It means a determination we reached after considering many negative outcomes to avoid, and many positive results we desire and determined to experience.

So how can you achieve your goal, enjoy the reward of your resolution and take control of your career, your health, family, finance and anything appealing to you, that need this resolution.

There is one secret I will like to share….

Master the Secret…

In the first place, most resolution fails because we did not carefully plan it out. Often time, when a plan is not fully thought out, it often ends in disaster and it leads to frustration. This is the root cause of a lot of people’s disappointment many faced when they cannot keep to their resolution.

You may ask; is there a good solution to this hit and miss? The clear and firm answer is yes.

I will show you the best practical approach to follow using the project management framework and I am sure you will like it. In fact, you can begin to experiment with it immediately to see how practical the technique is to everyday problem.

Develop I-P-E-MC-C

We are going to keep it simple and avoid all the big grammar of the trade, so that when you are sharing it with your peers, you will not sound too academic.

You will need to go through 5 easy steps; namely

1. Initiate your plan
2. Plan your plan
3. Execute your resolution
4. Monitor and control it
5. Close it by rewarding yourself

Initiate the Plan

As you become excited about your resolution, and begin talking about it, get a paper and pen to convince yourself, why you need to do this…. And remind yourself why this decision is important, at least, it is not selfish!

Look up some information to guide you, ask experts or trusted friends or colleagues that have gone through similar situation, gather useful information and ask as if you are investigating…. learn their tips and tricks. Show appreciation for the information you just gathered for free.

Plan your plan

With the abundant information you have gathered, you can begin with “a baby step” by asking yourself; where should I start? Select a plan that will not be too hard, but please make sure it is practical.

You can put all the plan in phases or stages. Say for example for phase one; you will gather all the information, phase two; you will start following the action plans one by one….and so on.

It is good to ask yourself; what if this first plan does not work out, because of certain circumstances, then it is good to have a second plan. This is called Plan B. With these plans, it is advisable to have a timeframe. Good plan always have specific dates, these timeline will help you to be more committed to executing it, because it will be on your mind.

Execute Your Resolution

Did I just mention executing? Yes. You must have been very attentive to this flow of thought. With the date you set, you can now begin to execute those plan step by step or phase by phase. If the first plan did not work, switch to the second one, keep the final outcome in mind. Don’t be discouraged

Ask for help from trusted friends or experts if you notice that you are struggling, remember the old saying “problem shared is half solved”, keep executing, please live one day at a time.

As you execute, commend yourself, see yourself as if you are in a race, you need endurance, determination and courage. Endurance is the strength that will help you to bear all the pains. Determination is the willpower that will give you the stamina not to give up. Courage is the bravery that will put steroid inside your endurance, and you will not even feel the shame and the pain again. You get what I mean!

Monitor and Control Your Plan

Now that you have the plan in motion, you are doing great. Walk tall, and keep a positive mindset, it is true there will be some setbacks, it is during the monitoring and controlling phase that you will be examining the statistics, how many times did relapse happen? What was going on, that led to this slight interruption?

Honest answers to these and other questions will help you reassess whether “plan B” need some tweaking. If I were you, I will tweak it, test the plan and dust myself up and keep going. I know you will do better than that, because we are all interested in the final outcome.

Close it and reward yourself

It’s been how many months now? Or how many years? Oh, it’s been quite a while, you have been enduring, you have learned, you have changed, the world is now seeing a new improved you, because of all the hard work you put into your resolution.

You listened as your friends, colleagues, spouse commend your determination and tenacity. By tenacity, I mean your firmness…that Queen’s grammar. It is just how people observing you go to the extent of using grandiose or big grammar to commend all your hard work.

Now that the result is in, you have acquired the experience and ready to teach others. Now you can even write a book, start a TV show, do a world tour, or become a celebrity….Ah. not so fast, I was just making you feel too good about all the hard work!

So, let’s close this chapter of resolution and start another one. Remember the saying; “life is a journey”, as you switch, you take a new turn and start another resolution.

Solid Project Management Skills

As you follow these five steps, you just extracted and applied the core project management life cycle. Now, you just proved smart, by distilling an academic information to improve yourself in any aspect you wish.

Do you know that you can actually acquire a skill in project management as a resolution?

Just as it was easy for you to go through these five steps, I can share another secret that will help you, improve your project management skills, help you lead a project and a project team successfully, become expert in a short time and you will even add professional certification that can lead to more opportunities; raise, promotion and leadership opportunities.

A New Resolution

A new resolution you can contemplate is – improve your career skills. Other examples include learning a new language, changing a habit or passing a certification to get a pay raise, improving the next annual performance review at work and proving to be a better team player.

Let’s talk about the project management skills. You can initiate it by reading up on CompTIA: Project+, that is a good starting point. I have quite a few blogs on the subject, they are in one place for you to study, digest and decide.

You can also plan how to acquire the knowledge through studying; buy books on Amazon, attend a nearby college, attend a boot camp or commute from office to class after work. Well, these are tough options, in your “plan B”, what about attending the classes on weekend at home, while in your PJ…. This sounds cozy….I mean warn and good to study online without driving to a classroom. I am just letting you know, that it is good to work smarter and not harder.

Now you should follow through, select the plan that works well for you. One that is cost effective and will not break the bank, or one you will not need HR approval to attend. I can show you a link with a good package you cannot resist, in case you don’t like your previous plan. If you are curious, see what I am talking about here!

Say you follow the one that I just mentioned, you will attend the classes online for 4 weekends, and within that time, you would have covered the entire exam objectives, end to end, it comes with practices questions, case studies to prepare you for the exam and for the real life project environment. Before you know it, you would have passed the professional certification and be ready to close this resolution and move on to another resolution.

Conclusion

As you can see, effective project management skills will not only help your career, it will help you in your everyday decisions. Give this lifecycle experiment a try today. You will be amazed at the effective results.