Reassess/ Recalculate/ Reinforce

I heard a great strategy plan the other day for mid-progress development for project management and effective execution. It's a simple three step process of reassess, recalculate, and reinforce.

Reassess requires us to evaluate our teams, resources, effectiveness, and movement toward goal. It's painful, but good for development. This requires us to draw in other perspectives and carefully address progress.

Recalculation requires that we take our lessons learned and, as a team, work to develop tweaks and refinements to our strategies. Rarely are strategies perfect from the onset, great success hinges on the ability to flex mid-stream.

Reinforce requires that we take these previous two lessons and carefully allocate proper resources for continued effectiveness and success.

These three simple steps can help guide us through quick evaluation of progress management and milestone evaluation.

Measuring Outcome vs. Activity

How many of us have seen people who work all the time and seem to accomplish next to nothing. Even worse, they are commended for their hard work.

There's a simple principle of measuring outcome vs. activity.

If we're measuring outcome then we've created some definition or baseline for what success looks like. We've given success body and we've given it meaning. Activity, though good for looks, is mostly empty air. It rarely reaps benefit.

There are two angles we should all take on this. The first is to analyze what we do on a daily basis and evaluate if it's for outcome or activity. Second, we should couch those who work on our teams the difference and instill value in our teams for outcome, and not activity.

This is an easy thing to fall into as most people hold 8-5 jobs. The 8-5 structure can dampen a work ethic as it seems you need to fill time more than you need to fill work needs. None the less, our responsibility is still to be productive in producing outcome. Don't let the 8-5 trap build complacency.

Impact vs. Benefit

When chartering a project it's good to discuss both the impact and the benefit. But these are two separate activities and perspective.

Impact are the results that manifest themselves from your effort. These impacts should be measurable and easy to understand. You should be able to measure some impact points immediately after your activity and then others manifest themselves through time. Both are important to measure.

Benefits are the aide and boost that's given to each area. Many times a benefits analysis is broken into all parties involved. Benefits project who is impacted and how. They are your goals for who takes gain and growth from the effort.

Impact and Benefits should not be mistaken as the same point. The key difference is that Impact points are the results outside that are measurable and benefits are the less tangible results with teams involved.

Challenge: Think through both impact and benefits as you charter any new project. It will help you map a much better strategy and potential for results management.

Impact Reporting

I've started working with organizations on the idea of Impact Reporting. It's really quite simple but its another means to measure success. The more I see the more I realize that we are terrible at measuring success or at least measuring the movement toward a goal. Truth is... it's difficult. Plus, it isn't required of many people.

The goal in all our efforts has to be to build a baseline and measure off that baseline. An Impact Report is simply a tool to accumulate those measures and progress toward them. Declination North has created a generalized tool with various options for what could populate an Impact Report and we're using that to help organizations reach their goals.

The reports are simple and often called dashboards for organizations. It might look like a health report or a stock review but however the report is compiled and designed it must function to track plan to actual.

If you take the time to do this your efforts will be more fruitful, your leadership will be more impressed, you'll have the tools to move forward with accuracy of impact, and you'll find your role more fulfilling.

Challenge: Take the time before a project to note what you intend on reporting and then consider how to measure that project's goal.

Personal Base-Lining

As a new year begins many people will sit and write their New Year resolutions and try their best to keep them. Sadly I’ve heard that most New Year’s resolutions are broken within the first week. I was having a discussion with a colleague where we were discussion how we might approach resolutions better.

This was when we discussed the idea of base-lining our goals. Now, I based mine more off “blue sky” life goals rather than specific resolutions as I try and keep my goals life-long and consistent in nature. But this tool could work for either.

The simple approach is to (1) make a list of personal goals, however many and however defined. Then (2) take those goals and give them a simple value between 1-5 as to where you hope to be in “x” weeks/months. Also note (3) where you feel like you are currently. Sure, this is completely subjective, but it’s just you and your reasoning should remain mostly consistent.

Here is what you can achieve. You have (1) written your goals, (2) noted where you currently feel you are on those goals, and (3) set a means to measure where you will be several weeks/months down the road.

Allow me to share an example. One goal for me is to help guide organizations to effective change and success. I have a good idea what that looks like for me and I know where I am currently. I gave myself a “2” for current as I’ve been doing more maintenance items recently and not able to work on bigger picture goals and vision enhancement. I also gave myself a “4” for a goal in that area with hopes the next three months will allow me to engage more in that area of ability and desire. That’s it; I just assign those two values and sit the paper aside.

Now, I’ll come back in three months and give myself a value for where I am then. At that point I’ll be able to see growth or areas in need of improvement. I know that I just can’t sit down a few months from now and say, “how do I feel about things?”; now I can gauge that against something more measurable.

Big picture is to discipline yourself to be objective in your assessment and quantifiable in measurement.

Challenge: Take a moment to map out your goals and blue sky ideas

Measurability of Effort

Why is measurability so difficult?

Maybe the better question for us is why don't we try to measure effort more frequently?

Perhaps the answer to the first question is in the second. Regardless, we all understand intuitively that measurability is important in all factors of life... not just work. This entry is an attempt to challenge our thoughts and foundations for measurability. The methodologies of effective measurability are complex and varied - we'll save those ideas for another entry.

Stewardship
We've all been task with certain assignments and responsibilities. In that tasking there's been given the responsibility to serve that task, supervisor, and business well. But that stewardship goes beyond preventative safety - it must proactively chart and measure the vitals of success. The point here - we are stewards of measurability.

Quantitative
This is a great place to start on an approach to measure the vitals of a project, team, program, etc. Most of us can brainstorm enough to collect the vitals we deem as important. Take those vitals and determine some numerical value to their effort and how to gauge alignment to that vital. The point here - quantitative measure are a easy start point; make these the first part of measurability.

Qualitative
These are more difficult, but they are also typically more important to measure. For example; if I were leading a session on better efficiency in work-life and personal-life then how could I measure life change? We all agree that things like life change and other subjective matters are difficult to measure. But they are not impossible to measure! This is your opportunity to raise above the normal and seek to add value and important to the quality and results of your effort.

My greatest success in this ares has always been in developing these vitals with teams. We rarely see the full perspective, therefore making it vital to have others input. If you do look to measure your efforts, make certain to look at both quantitative and qualitative measures - you and your organization will be better for it. And may I encourage you once again... I don't believe this is something you could do; I believe this is something you should do. This is our responsibility as managers and leaders.

Challenge: Brainstorm with your team what measures might look like and how your might evaluate. You don't have to figure it all out - just give it some thought and try and few things.

Measuring All Directions

We've discussed measures and the necessity for leaders to provide the proper measurements for effective management.

I would like to dive a little into what we measure and how these efforts are beneficial to our next steps.

First, we must measure in all directions... historical, current, and future.

Historical
Measuring historically means searching past developments and tracking what's been successful, observing key points, looking for clusterings of ideas, and organizing thoughts into natural groupings.

Current
Measuring current measures means having real time measures for key vitals/goals of current projects. These measures are based on future goal and lessons from the past.

Future
Measuring future measures is somewhat subjective, but feasible if historical and current measures are maintained. Future measures can be tracked in advance if the vectors effecting those goals are known and measured.

Measures are possible for various angles on any project development - leaders must work to think outside the pressures of task to define the principled goal that can be measured and create the tools to perform those practices.

Additionally, measures should be simple, understandable, quantifiable, and efficiently quick to gauge.

Challenge: Expand your perspective of measures, think past, present, and future for the tangibility of your goals.

Before & After

We are often too consumed in a project to take the time to evaluate it's potential impact, how to measure that impact, and to clearly state our goals. This is in large part due to many of our lives our so last minute driven that we are forced to produce something without necessary strategic foresight.

Take proper time to plan may make all the difference in an effective strategy. One simple way to plan is to evaluate the project on certain criteria before you set out on that project. Develop some means to score the projects current status and then score it again once you have completed the project to benchmark any progress and development.

Observing the status of the before and after can help your team gauge it's effectiveness through a project and give you an opportunity to celebrate an effective success in strategy.

There's a business principle that says, "projects that are unmeasurable are unmanageable". Keep that in mind as you seek to refine and deploy new initiatives, if you haven't set a measurable means for success then you and your team essentially have nothing to manage.

Challenge: Take the time to define your goal and develop a way to assess that goal pre and post project.

More than a Survey

Many organizations seek to learn customer or consumer facts by simple and non-strategic methods… such as generalized surveys. Sure, surveys can be useful to collect key data in a very narrow yet defined criteria and method.

But what if you want more, what do you do? The next best step is often to speak with the consumer directly. Speaking with consumers is useful but we must realize that consumers don’t necessarily know or fail to have the ability to articulate what they need.

I believe the greatest way to gage real consumer needs is to observe them in action. Consumers may not be able to articulate a need, but have them perform that certain task, have them go through that certain process, observe what they do and don’t do, and you’ll learn a ton.

Challenge: Think through ways that you can observe key areas of consumer need – think beyond the survey.