Published by BrightWork Publications

Galway|Boston

All enquiries to [email protected]

Second Edition

ISBN (hard copy): 978-0-9954542-6-2

ISBN (Kindle edition): 978-0-9954542-7-9
Distributed by Amazon Books

Cover and interior diagrams illustrated

by Alan Geraghty and Ray Glasheen, BrightWork.

Back cover photography by Gerald Glynn, BrightWork.

Second edition editing by Grace Windsor, BrightWork.

Copyright © Éamonn McGuinness, BrightWork, 2017.

All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without permission.

www.BrightWork.com
 DEDICATION
This book is gratefully dedicated to the many BrightWork
customers, partners and members of the core BrightWork team
around the world who advance the cause of making collaborative
project management a success for those they work with every day.
These same people have helped me write this book. My sincere
thanks.

PROCEEDS FROM THIS BOOK

The entire proceeds of this book (and not just the profits) will go
to Concern Worldwide, an organization dedicated to working with
the world’s poorest people to help transform lives.
https://www.concern.net/
SECTION 1. SUCCESSFULLY IMPLEMENTING
COLLABORATIVE PROJECT MANAGEMENT 1

Why this Book 1

Intent and Intended Audience 1

How to Use this Book – Start|Evolve 2

Change Management – Start|Evolve 3

How to Use this Book – A Handbook 4

Personal Change Management and REP 4

SECTION 2. COLLABORATIVE PROJECT

MANAGEMENT EXPLAINED 10

Introduction to Project Management 10

Collaborative Project Management – Why? 11

Collaborative Project Management – What? 17

Collaborative Project Management – A Framework 24

Project Management versus Process Management 28

SECTION 3. COLLABORATIVE PROJECT

MANAGEMENT – THE STAGES 33

Get a Fast Start – Track Projects 33

Stage 1 – Initiate the Project 39

Stage 2 – Plan and Setup the Project 45

Stage 3 – Work the Project 51

Stage 4 – Track and Re-Plan the Project 55

Stage 5 – Close the Project 61

Build your Own Approach 65

Collaborative Project Management – Tool Support 68

SECTION 4. PERSONAL LEADERSHIP 69

Manage Your Energy 70

Sharpen Your Attitude to Life 82

Know Your Personality 97

Manage Your Time – A 5 Step Approach 112

Manage Your Time – 18 Traps and Tips 128

Save Time – Manage Your Email 139

Save Time – Four Microsoft Outlook Tips 146

SECTION 5. SITUATIONAL LEADERSHIP 150

Manage Meetings 151

Make Good Decisions 162

Cultivate Your Leadership Approaches 169

REP to New Habits 182

Feedback Please 183

 Section 1. Successfully
Implementing Collaborative
Project Management
Why this Book
Over the years, we at BrightWork have heard the need for
collaborative project management guidance and resources from our
customers. In 2010, we published a collaborative project
management guide on the BrightWork website to address these
needs. In 2016, the guide evolved into a first edition of this
handbook.
This new second edition in 2017 builds and expands on the first
edition by adding the three-step Collaborative Project Management
Framework – Collaborate, Lead, and Evolve – and an expanded
section on leadership covering both Personal and Situational
Leadership.

Intent and Intended Audience

Project management is moving away from traditional managerial
hierarchies and processes to a more collaborative approach, which
emphasizes teamwork and cooperation. At BrightWork, we have
developed a framework – Collaborate, Lead, and Evolve – to guide
collaborative project management. The framework is explained in
more detail in Section 2.
The book outlines the tools, resources, and leadership needed
to deliver projects collaboratively using the framework. The book
provides a description of the typical stages and steps involved in
successfully managing a project collaboratively with a team,
including steps for the project team members. In this regard, it is
all about process. The book also addresses the critical topics of
Personal and Situational Leadership. To this end, I describe the
habits, qualities, and attitudes that successful project managers and
team members practice and exhibit. And in this regard, the book is
all about people. Naturally enough, the people and process aspects
are inter-dependent and critical to collaborative project

1
 How to Use this Book – Start|Evolve

management.
Our intent and intended audience is as follows:
- An easy-to-follow and simple-to-use collaborative project
management book for new, “accidental” or “occasional”
project managers
- A guide for team members who want to collaborate in the
active management of projects
- A source of materials experienced project managers can adapt
to coach new project managers.
The objective is not to have this book replace formal project
management training. There will still be a need for some new
project managers to take training classes to acquire a deeper
knowledge of project management principles. Indeed, we have seen
some BrightWork customers use the original guide and this
handbook as introductory training for new project managers and
teams. With tongue in cheek, we do, however, hope this latest
advice does not go the same way as that of George Harris (1844-
1922), US Churchman and Educator, who was addressing students
at the start of a new academic year. He said: “I intended to give you
some advice but now I remember how much is left over from last year unused.”

How to Use this Book –

Start|Evolve
If you decide that you need local collaborative
project management guidance, let me add some
advice at this point. We at BrightWork are strong
believers in the “Start|Evolve” approach to deploying collaborative
project management.

2
 Collaborative Project Management: A Handbook

We often see organizations go from a place of few common

project management practices to a place where they're trying to
implement a lot of project management too quickly. We believe in
an agile approach, where a little delivered with frequent feedback is
a stronger method of building sustainable project management
improvement.
Please feel confident in selecting and starting with a small
amount of the advice from this book to implement quickly and
enjoy early success with your team(s). Then, every month or
quarter, come back and evolve these collaborative project
management practices based on your team’s feedback and some
more of the guidance contained in this book. If you remember this
“Start|Evolve” approach, you will get there sooner and better.

Change Management – Start|Evolve

Some people find it hard to make changes. They get stuck in a rut.
As a result, the questions become: How do you get out of it? How
do you move? How do you change? This is where “Start|Evolve”
comes into play.
What you really want to do is make a start. Just get some
momentum and keep going. Aristotle put it well when he said, “that
which we learn to do, we learn by doing”. You have to do something in
order to learn. It's the doing that helps us change. The doing brings
us along.
The BrightWork philosophy of “Start|Evolve” is a very
pragmatic way of implementing collaborative project management.
Information has a very short half-life. The problem with picking
up a new piece of information is unless you do something with it,
you forget it very quickly. We tend to confuse reading many books
and hearing a lot of stuff with making a change.
One of the other challenges is much of what we hear and read,
including what you're reading in this handbook, is common sense.
And as my father always said to me: “Common sense, unfortunately
Éamonn, it's just not that common!” And the reason it's not that
common is because we don't practice what we learn. And if we
don't practice what we learn, it doesn't become a part of us. It
doesn't become a part of the way we work. At one level, change is
hard, but at another level, when you understand how to change, it
becomes very easy. Just start. Go for it and don't be afraid to fall.

3
 How to Use this Book – A Handbook

How to Use this Book – A

Handbook
There is too much advice in this book for a new
project manager to implement in one go. This is a positive! I
suggest you read the book once through and then come back later
as needed to use this book as a handbook. Perhaps mark with an *
the ideas that you feel might be helpful. Feel free to skip chapters
you have less interest in on your first read. If there are practices
suggested you do not like or believe in, then please ignore them!
Each chapter represents an actionable chunk of collaborative
project management or leadership advice and ends with an
implementation exercise. I suggest you read and exercise the pieces
of this book you believe would be helpful as you start a new phase
of a project or a new project.
If you do decide to use this book as a handbook and come back
for advice and exercises, I suggest that you keep a journal with your
notes. More to follow in the next section.
My real hope is that you will find practical advice in this book to
take and use on your projects and perhaps more broadly in your
life. I wish you much success in working this book. To this end,
this book will henceforth be called a handbook!

Personal Change Management and REP

One of the things we find at BrightWork is that people fall into the
trap of making some change with initial success and then stop, so
we crafted the “REP” approach.
REP is a play on the word ‘repetition’. We all know that when
we repeat something often enough, we tend to get good at it. Now
we need to repeat it intelligently. We can't repeat it the exact same
way every time and expect better results. We have to make
adjustments.
It's like riding a bike. If you ride a bike for weeks and months,
you get good at riding a bike. Repetition is an important aspect of
mastery. The people we work with at BrightWork want to be
masters of collaborative project management. Repetition is key to
this achievement.
REP stands for Research, Execute, and Post-Mortem. REP is a
very simple but effective personal change management process.

4
 Collaborative Project Management: A Handbook

Research Phase
What you're aiming to do in the research phase is gain new
knowledge. You're seeking best practices. You're looking for great
approaches. You're also trying to decide which ones you are going
to trial.
In this research phase, have fun. Enjoy learning. Love learning.
Enjoy researching, looking for new approaches, and looking for
new practices. Research can be done in many ways. It can be done
online. You can talk to colleagues. You can take this collaborative
project management and leadership guidance from BrightWork.
You have an infinite source of ideas these days and you should
enjoy researching them, studying them, learning from them.
As you research, I suggest that you keep a REP
Journal. The REP Journal is updated continuously
with notes on anything you liked and thought
you’d like to try out to see if it might work.
At the end of the “R” stage, look through the
ideas in your REP Journal and pick a handful. Be
realistic! If you have twenty ideas, pick two, pick three or just pick
one if that's what you're comfortable with. You must then decide
where you are going to trial these ideas. Where are you going to
execute? When are you going to exercise?

5
 Personal Change Management and REP

The output of the “R” stage is new ideas, new energy, and a
decision. That's key: a decision on which ideas you're going to try
and practice.

Execute Phase
The “E” phase is where you Execute these new ideas. You exercise
them, try them out, practice them, and experiment with them. The
essence of the Execute phase is that you “do it”. You try out and
prototype the new ideas or practices to see what works. Ideally, you
lean back on the wisdom in the Research phase and call on your
manager, coach, or mentor to help you. There's no question if you
execute honestly and earnestly, you will be performing better this
time than you were the last time. And you will have succeeded.
One thing to consider in the Execute phase is you don't have to
work alone. Think about the people in the world who are at the top
of their game. They all have coaches, mentors, a shoulder to cry on,
someone to push them, someone to nudge them. They have
someone behind them who gives them support. If the best in the
world achieve their best with a coach, why wouldn't you have one
also? Why not ask someone you believe in and trust to be your
coach. You deserve a coach – we all do.

Post-Mortem Phase
The question you've got to ask yourself in the Post-Mortem stage is
“Could I have performed better?” Of course you're going to say yes.
You're going to celebrate the success of the Execute phase, you're
going to enjoy it, but you're not going to rest on your laurels.
You need time out to reflect. You need to think through which
practices worked really well and which could have worked better.
One of the challenges with making a change is people don't take
the time to research new approaches. Those that do are ahead.
Another challenge we have is many people who do research don't
all execute. They don't practice. Those who do practice are way
ahead. Maybe they're even getting fifty, sixty, seventy percent of the
value. The people who find and research new ideas, execute them,
and actually stop to think afterwards become the masters. Keep
this in mind and understand that reflection is a very important part
of mastery.
At the end of the Post-Mortem phase, you may take a break to

6
 Collaborative Project Management: A Handbook

celebrate and enjoy your success but you also get ready to start the
REP cycle again. It may not be today that you start the REP cycle.
It may not be tomorrow or even next month and that’s ok. It is
repetition after all, so you need to repeat the cycle to improve.

REP Again
In the Post-Mortem, you reflected on what happened in the
Execute phase. You've really learned from this experience. You
know what worked and what needs to be tweaked. Now, go back
to your Research phase and look at all the ideas you had. Maybe
you decided to execute a few and they worked well. There were
perhaps four more ideas that you didn't execute during your first
REP; pick one or two new ideas and repeat the cycle again.
This REP approach can be used to help you adopt and adapt
the process or leadership aspects of Collaborative Project
Management. You can use REP to deploy the collaborative stages
and steps. REP will also help you with the implementation of the
personal and leadership practices suggested in this handbook. REP
is designed to improve capability and to foster creativity.
REP your way to success. We all know someone who goes to
the gym to do REPs. They get stronger one day at a time and by
some miracle, twelve months down the road, they’re really fit!
When it comes to REP, it’s the same principle. It's repetition,
repetitio, it's REP. Our personal change management suggestion
from BrightWork is to REP your way to success. REP your way to
achieve your ambitions. REP your way to change. REP your way to
happiness. Please remember that this advancement will not happen
by accident. Be intentional about how you want to live your life,
about how you change, and use REP or some similar pattern to
achieve that change.
Always remember, “You can do anything you want to do in life, you
just have to want to do it.”

REP Schedule
You can do more than one REP at once and therefore your REPs
overlap, but you need to give enough time to fully complete the
three stages of each REP. Here is a sample REP schedule.

7
 Personal Change Management and REP

- January: Research phase on your first REP (e.g. Improve Time

Management).
- February and March: Execute phase for your first REP (e.g.
Improve Time Management).
- March: Research phase of your second REP (e.g. Collaborative
Project Initiation).
- April: Post-Mortem phase for the first REP (e.g. Improve
Time Management). Decide if and when you need to do
another REP on this topic.
- April and May: Execute phase for your second REP (e.g.
Collaborative Project Initiation).
- June: Post-Mortem phase for the second REP (e.g.
Collaborative Project Initiation). Decide if and when you need
to do another REP on this area.
- July: Take a well-deserved break from REP!
- August: Start the Research phase on your third REP (e.g.
Improve Time Management – Part 2).

Shorter REP Cycles

The REP cycles described above are very thorough and quite long.
This REP approach might suit your learning style and the situation
you find yourself in. You can also try shorter REP cycles, with
more frequent iterations. Let’s say you want to improve Time
Management. You could do a REP cycle each week as follows:
- Monday of the first week: Set time aside to do some Research
and select a few ideas or practices to try out, and make a note
of these in your REP Journal.
- Rest of the week: Execute the selected practices and exercise
them for real. Go back to your notes from the Research phase
throughout the week as needed for extra guidance.

8
 Collaborative Project Management: A Handbook

- Monday of the next week: In a set time period, do a Post-

Mortem on the prior week and decide how the practices
worked. Do you need to focus on them for another week or
are you ready to experiment with some new practices? Carry
out new Research and select a few extra practices to try out,
and again make a note of these in your REP Journal.
- Lather, rinse, repeat. Keep going through this weekly cycle for
as many weeks as you find helpful.
In summary, once you get moving with this approach, you are
Executing and trying out the practices during the week with a Post-
Mortem and a Research phase every Monday. If you REP this way,
you could have one new practice started each week and forty or
more in a year. This is a lot and will be very rewarding.

Connecting to Why
If you have a need and a desire to change you will most likely find
REP a useful approach. If you have a desire to change but are not
managing to do so, then it is helpful and important to connect to
your “why”. Why do you wish/need to change? Keep asking
“why” until you get the answer. Get to the root cause. What is your
motivation for change? Connect with and remember your “why”.

Exercise
Here are some questions to ponder even before
you read this handbook:
- Do you feel that you need to make some
changes and what is your why?
- Do you think REP could help ensure
change and growth?
- If the answer to the previous question is yes, are there
some areas of your personal and professional life that you
wish to or need to REP and when will you start? Why not
build REP time into your weekly schedule?
- If the answer to the second question is no, can you use
some of the REP thinking to devise a personal change
management approach that works for you?
Suggestion: Keep notes of this exercise in a REP Journal.

9
 Section 2. Collaborative Project
Management Explained
Introduction to Project Management
If you're in an organization and you want to do something new,
strategic, exciting, challenging, difficult – it's a project.
A project is a way to transform, to bring an organization or a
group to a new place. A project is a way to realize ambitions. In
some cases, a project is a way to help people achieve their dreams.
A project is from here to a new place, to a better place, to an
exciting place, to a different place. A project is a way to get to
where you want to go.
A really good project should be enjoyable both because of the
destination you want to reach and because of the journey you're
taking. With a project you should be thinking: “I really want to get
there. It's important to me. It's important to my group, or my team,
or my organization, and I'm enjoying the journey.”
Proper project management, exciting project management is
both an enjoyable journey and a fabulous destination.

The Essence
There was a time when the workplace was different; some people
were very rigidly trained in project management and the other
people did what they were told.
The workforce has changed. By the year 2020, half the
workforce will be millennials. These are people who enter the
workforce after the year 2000. There is a lot of very unhealthy and
even patronizing commentary on the millennial generation, but by
and large, these folks want to work for a purpose and not a
hierarchy. They understand what's happening. They're willing and
able to contribute to the projects. They want to make an impact.
As a lot of smart and energetic people join the workforce, there
needs to be a way to tap into the talent of these new people who
want to help with projects. This is where collaborative project
management comes in to play. Collaborative project management is
transformed from the old command and control structure - “You’ll

10
 Collaborative Project Management: A Handbook

do what I tell you!” - into “Let’s work together to get this done”. I
served ten years in the Army, and we were good at the former as
the need arose! Modern, effective project management is about
collaborative project management. It's people working together,
enjoying the journey on the way to an agreed destination.

Collaborative Project Management – Why?

Why do we need collaborative project management guidance?
Surely all projects are running fine and we don't need any help? If
you think there might be a need for collaborative resources and
guidance, hang with me for a little bit and I will go through some
of the main reasons as to why collaborative project management
guidance for any group might be a good idea.

Old Challenges – Failed Projects

You would think because project management is a relatively old
and mature discipline, it would be practiced successfully
everywhere, and there wouldn't be many failed projects.
Unfortunately, this is not the case. What we find is a landscape
littered with delayed, challenged, and unfortunately, failed projects.
The first two reports below are geographic – the first from Europe
and the second from the US. The second two are industry reports
from the IT (Information Technology) and Construction sectors. I
could have filled more pages with other reports of failed projects.
- “EU wastes migrant aid millions with 'chaotic and badly
managed' projects”, or so reads the March 17th 2016
headline 1 reporting on a finding by the European Court of
Auditors. The report claimed that the projects were poorly
designed, badly managed, chaotically supervised and, as a
result, were often ineffective. Two-thirds of the 23 projects
examined only “partly” met their goals. “This was often
due to their excessively vague or general nature, which
frequently made it impossible to measure results,” the court
said.

1 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/12196776/EU-wastes-migrant-
aid-millions-with-chaotic-and-badly-managed-projects.html

11
 Collaborative Project Management – Why?

- The United States Department of Defense canceled 18

major programs in the 2000s, having spent more than
$59M, according to a Center for Strategic and International
Studies report published in January 2016. 2 The report
explains that this money was spent “without any fielded
systems to show for it.” This data was based on a sample
of 18 major programs, so we assume there were more
challenged projects like these. Needless to say this is a
complex topic, but the report does claim that “many of
these cancellations were arguably justified due to
requirements creep and cost overruns.” The report then
goes on to explain the other factors, specifically “the
cumulative effect of successive acquisition starts, stops, and
restarts”.
- The Standish Group reported on 50,000 IT projects from
around the world in their 2015 Chaos report. In one
classification, the report stratifies projects into Successful
(29% in 2015), Challenged (52% in 2015) or Failed (19% in
2015). 3
- According to KPMG’s Global Construction survey 4,
“Project owners said only 31 percent of their projects came
within 10 percent of budget, and just 25 percent within 10
percent of original deadlines, in the past three years” and
“Over half of construction project owners experienced one
or more underperforming projects in the previous year.”
Unfortunately, while we would think that project management
is easy and natural, careful and effective project management is still
needed.

2 https://csis.org/files/publication/160126_Harrison_DefenseModernization_Web.pdf
3 http://www.infoq.com/articles/standish-chaos-2015
4https://home.kpmg.com/xx/en/home/media/press-releases/2015/04/construction-
project-failures-weigh-industry.html

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 Collaborative Project Management: A Handbook

Exercise
A few questions for you to reflect on:
- Have you personally experienced any
challenged or failed projects?
- Have you been connected with a group
that has had failed or challenged projects in your current
organization? Or perhaps this happened in your last
organization?
It will be worthwhile to take a timeout to think through and reflect
on these experiences. Another idea would be to do your own
internet research on “failed projects”, read the lessons learned, and
compare these to your own experiences. We can and should learn
from the challenges of others.

Newer Challenges – Collaboration

Ironically as organizations strive for more and more collaboration,
it has the tendency to make project management more challenging
in some cases. Who would have thought that this would be the
case? Let's run through six reasons as to why this can happen:
i. At BrightWork, we find that more initiatives in our customers’
organizations around the world are now delivered, or designed
to be delivered, as collaborative projects. Organizations want
to complete these projects with a team collaborating well
together, sometimes across different offices, countries, time
zones, and companies.
ii. Project teams are staffed with intelligent team members from a
wide range of backgrounds and disciplines who expect to be
involved in the decision making of a project. They are no
longer interested in the old ‘command and control’ type of
projects where they were allocated tasks, did them, and didn’t
think too much about them or their greater success and impact
on the project.
iii. We're also seeing more and more projects set up with some
sort of a project site and / or shared directories, or both! The
challenge with some of these projects sites, or shared
directories, is that they're often populated with just some, but
not all, of the project information. And you know what they

13
 Collaborative Project Management – Why?

say about a little information being a dangerous thing! It

would of course be safer if the project site had all the project
information. That way, the extended project team could
consider all the information and not just a subset of the
project information before forming their opinions, making
their decisions and giving their inputs.
iv. Many organizations do have some people formally trained in
project management, perhaps with models like the Project
Management Institute’s ‘Project Management Body of
Knowledge’ (PMBOK), or PRINCE2 from the UK. That said,
the fourth challenge is we have what a colleague of mine
termed the ‘P-MBAs’ or the ‘project managers by accident!’.
Often these new project managers are business leads or
technically qualified people who, by default, end up leading
projects. There's absolutely nothing wrong with technical
people leading projects. In fact, it's normally a great idea that
the person with the most knowledge is in a leadership
position. However, organizations often don't have the time or
budget to send these folks on project management training.
Hence, they and the project are challenged from the outset.
v. The fifth reason that projects are succumbing to challenges is
to do with the so-called ‘Millennials’ or ‘Generation Y’. These
are folks born in the 1980s and the 1990s. By and large, this
generation, and my own children are among them, have a
different set of expectations. They need to be more convinced
what they're doing makes sense, is worthwhile, and is for a
greater cause or purpose. They're less likely to be involved in
something because they were told it was the right thing to do!
vi. The sixth and final reason is that as organizations become
more informal and less structured, there is a lack of guidelines
and standards for the project managers to follow. Most
organizations we work with do not have a defined process or
set of standards to guide new project managers. You might say
this does not really matter – and in some cases you may be
right – but what if an organization wants to move people
around to drive larger projects to success? Some common
ways of managing projects would be useful. Similarly, what if
an organization has problems delivering projects with these
new project managers? Would it not be better to have a
project management process to fix rather than a person to

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 Collaborative Project Management: A Handbook

blame?
Look at these six trends and put yourself in the shoes of the
new project managers. You will see it's very challenging in this
environment for new project managers to collaboratively manage
projects and bring them home successfully.

Embrace the Change

A little earlier, I explained that it's always been difficult to manage
projects. I called these the old challenges, the tradition of the failed
or challenged projects. Above I covered six newer challenges that
face today's project managers. When we look at some of the newer
challenges, we also find a wonderful new opportunity. When
turned around, these challenges become possibilities to manage
projects in a very different way. If some very smart people are
willing and ready to help manage your project to success, and if
modern collaborative tools are coming on stream, why not take
advantage of these new possibilities? It makes a lot of sense not to
fight these challenges, but to embrace them.

Do you need Collaborative Project Management

Guidance?
It is possible to carry out a self-test to see if your group needs
collaborative project management guidance. This particular version
of the test consists of four simple questions:
i. Projects meeting expectations?
“Are all your projects performing to expectations and are they
delivering the results your customers expect?” If the answer to
this question is yes, then you have absolutely nothing to
worry about. If the answer is no, you should probably
proceed to question two!
ii. Visibility into projects?
“Can you at least get real time visibility into these projects?” If the
projects aren't running the way you wish, then you
should at least be able to see what's going on in the
projects so you can take the appropriate actions. If you
answer yes to this question, you're probably in good
shape. But if you answer no, you should probably keep
going to question three!

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 Collaborative Project Management – Why?

iii. Trained project teams?

“If you can't see into what's happening on the projects, are all the
people involved in the projects skilled and trained in project
management or collaborative project management?” And if they
are, then you probably have very little to worry about.
But if they're not, then you probably should proceed to
question four.
iv. Local guidance available?
“What if the projects aren't working the way you wish, you can't
see into the projects and the people don't have deep training in
project management, is there at least local guidance and are there
templates available on how to deliver projects collaboratively?”
If you answer no to the above four questions, then it probably
makes sense to develop or find some local collaborative project
management guidance.

Exercise
Earlier I quoted from Aristotle: “That which we learn
to do we learn by doing.” Our challenge is to find time
so that we can change, improve or evolve how the
organization is run. With all of this in mind, a
“Start|Evolve” approach to implementing the learnings of this
handbook might help.
Start: Ask yourself the four question self-test above. Then you can
decide if an investment in collaborative project management
guidance is justified either now or later. Answering questions about
“why” change is needed is a critical step in the process.
Evolve: Later, you might ask your leadership team to take the four
question self-test. This will hopefully prompt a discussion to see if
an investment in a collaborative project management process is
necessary or justified for your group.

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 Collaborative Project Management: A Handbook

Collaborative Project Management – What?

Introduction
This chapter will explain an approach to project management that
is influenced by and very aware of the enemies that conspire to
make project management difficult. But first we need to have a
shared view of what constitutes a project.

Characteristics of a Project
How do you know you've got a project on your hands? Here
follows six common characteristics of a project that help answer
this question:
i. A project is often for a designated customer or customer base.
ii. A project is temporary in nature. It typically has a defined start
and a defined end point. Or at least it has an ideal or target
end point.
iii. A project will have a unique and specific set of objectives that
need to be delivered within the boundaries of the project.
iv. A project is typically more of a once-off endeavor rather than
something that's happening all the time in a repeated fashion.
v. A project is not ‘business as usual’, which is more akin to a
process.
vi. A project can be cross-functional, or indeed cross-
organizational.

Project Management Definitions

The PMI (Project Management Institute) has established standards
for Project Management. These standards are incorporated into
PMBOK and define a project as:
- A job that has a beginning and an end (Time)
- At a stated level of Performance (Quality)
- At a budget (Cost) and a specific outcome (Scope).
PRINCE2 (a process that originated in the UK) defines
standard approaches to project management as: “a temporary
organization that is created for the purpose of delivering one or more business
products according to an agreed business case.”

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 Collaborative Project Management – What?

Project Constraints
You will also find that your project can be described by multiple
conflicting constraints. Here are five of these common constraints:
i. Scope: The scope defines the customer’s needs and the
requirements expressed and implied.
ii. Time: Typically, a project is required by a customer in a fixed
amount of time and by a deadline.
iii. Quality: The third constraint is the quality of the work
required on the project. To what standard is the project
expected to deliver?
iv. Cost/Resources: The fourth constraint is the amount of
money, budget or resources that are available to be expended
on the project.
v. Value: Another constraint is the amount of value provided by
the project or this iteration of the project.
It's obviously not possible to fix and agree on all five of these
constraints as the projects starts, which is why they're called
conflicting constraints. Let’s take a simple example to explain. As
you start a new project, it is unlikely that you can agree to deliver
forty new requirements on your project, in one year, to a perfect
quality standard, with one person on the team and deliver all the
business value expected. You probably do not know enough about
the specifics of the requirements. You do not yet know what else
might happen in the year. It is likely that there is no common
understanding of what the quality standard is to be able to make
this commitment.
Given this, it's important to listen to your customer and ask
enough questions so you understand which of these constraints are
really critical and therefore fixed. Is it that all the requirements
must be delivered? Or is something significant needed by the end
of the year, even if all the requirements are not delivered to deliver
a specific value to the customer? Or is it that you need to do as
much as you can with four people and a hundred thousand dollars?
This is often called the time–quality–cost triangle.

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 Collaborative Project Management: A Handbook

Time, quality and cost are the sides and you need to elongate or
shorten each of the sides so they continue to form a triangle. You
may be fixing one of the constraints (e.g. time) and adjusting the
other two to match. The above diagram is typical of how the
challenge of constraints is represented. However, there are usually
more than three constraints and therefore your triangle becomes a
rectangle or a pentagon, etc.
Let me use an example close to home. At BrightWork, we
release a new product to our customers about twice a year, so we
endeavor to fix the time constraint at six months. The quality and
the ease of use has to meet a very high standard, as it's not
acceptable to ship poor quality software. In this case, the time and
the quality are fixed and therefore the third constraint, which is the
value and scope of functionality we deliver, is the one that varies.
We try to fit in as much collaborative project management
capability as we can in each release, but it has to be done in a
certain amount of time and with a very high degree of quality. In
our typical case, time and quality are fixed and the project scope is
variable. Sometimes we deliver more value than originally planned
and sometimes we deliver less.

An Ideal Approach to Project Management

In an ideal world we would be able to manage projects using the
following simple process with four stages:

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 Collaborative Project Management – What?

The Enemies of Project Management

As we know, we do not live in an ideal world! There is a wonderful
quote from a Prussian Army Chief of Staff that can be paraphrased
as follows: “No plan ever survives the first encounter with the enemy.”
(Helmuth Karl Bernhard Graf von Molted (1800 – 1891), Chief of
Staff of the Prussian Army and Master Strategist).
When we say that no plan ever survives the first encounter with
the enemy, we should probably identify the enemies! There are at
least five and I'm sure you could add another few yourself.
i. Project Constraints: You know a project has to deliver on
time, to a high level of quality within some defined cost
parameters, and to some agreed scope. It can be very difficult
for a project manager to keep these constraints in balance.
This reality is challenging to say the least.
ii. Poor Planning: Poor estimation or poor planning can doom a
project from the start. This can often happen due to a lack of
time or lack of experience on behalf of the project manager.
iii. Issues: Actual problems or issues occur on pretty much every
project. There is no escaping them. They happen. They are
real.
iv. Risks: Another challenge are the risks that might come to pass.
These distract us as we need to keep an eye on them, and
some of these we need to mitigate against.
v. Change Requests: The fifth enemy that conspires to derail the
initial plan are the inevitable set of change requests, formal or
informal, that arise on projects.

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 Collaborative Project Management: A Handbook

These so-called enemies are the normal stuff of project

management. This is what a project manager is trained to expect to
have to contend and deal with. Because these enemies are very real,
an ideal approach to project management is not possible.

A Real Project Management Approach

In order to successfully manage a project, you need an approach.
You may choose to call this a process or standard but we will not
get too bureaucratic with terminology in this handbook! A very real
yet simple approach to collaborative project management is based
on the ideal approach explained above and is aware of the realities
of project management. The resulting approach is then comprised
of the following five stages:

The process of re-planning is a constant one, since in reality and

by necessity project plans do change, which is why we add the new
fourth stage, “Track and Re-plan the Project.” We will explore the
five stages in more detail in Section 3.

Portfolio Management
A larger project, or perhaps the implementation of some business
goal or strategy, will often require more than one project. When
you get involved in a collection of projects, you may encounter any
one of the following terms: portfolio, project portfolio, project
office, or PMO. The PMO refers to the “project management
office” or is sometimes called the “program management office.”

21
 Collaborative Project Management – What?

You will also see a hierarchy of project management constructs

and terms that go as follows: project at the bottom, rolling to a
program above, rolling up to a portfolio. There is no right and
wrong use of the preceding terms or phrases. In your group, I
assume that you have many, many projects and use some of this
terminology. Typically, it's best to ask locally how the terms are
used and in what context.

Exercise
At this stage, I suggest a time out. Take a few
moments to think about the ideas just covered
and ask yourself the following questions:
- What projects are underway in your
group?
- What work is underway in your group that you might now
classify as a project?
- Which of these projects could you use to practice your
collaborative project management trade?

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 Collaborative Project Management: A Handbook

The Collaborative Tool Assumption

This handbook assumes that you wish to manage the project
collaboratively with your team. It also assumes that Microsoft
SharePoint or some such collaborative tool is available. The
collaborative platform does not have to be SharePoint, but this is a
very popular tool set. Numbers released by Microsoft in May 2016
claim that more than 200,000 organizations are using SharePoint
with more than 190 million paid seats.
SharePoint has delivered a free version since the year 2000, so
the availability of SharePoint or something ‘SharePoint-like’ is not
too big an assumption these days. SharePoint 2013 Foundation was
the last free version of SharePoint delivered and is an amazing
product given its free price point! The newest version, SharePoint
2016, does not deliver a free Foundation version.
You might ask the question – is this handbook about
collaboratively managing projects or perhaps more about managing
projects on SharePoint? It is absolutely about the former,
collaborative project management. However, we just cannot
imagine managing a project without some shared project space –
hence the few (but not too many) SharePoint references you will
find in this handbook.

Exercise
At this stage in the handbook, it’s probably a good
idea to exercise the information above and do
something with it. This will aid your real learning.
Start: Investigate if there is a collaborative project
management process defined in your organization. If there is one,
you could study it. If there's no such process, you might study how
actual projects are delivered and understand this.
Evolve: Most organizations do not have a defined common
approach or collaborative toolset for project management, so do
not feel alone if this is the case in your organization. If you want to
evolve, a suggestion is to ask your colleagues and managers why
there isn't a collaborative management process/toolset, and then
see where this exploration takes you.

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 Collaborative Project Management – A Framework

Collaborative Project Management – A

Framework
The last few chapters explained the ‘why’ and the ‘what’ of
collaborative project management. This chapter explains the ‘how’
at a high level by introducing a Collaborative Project Management
Framework. The sections and chapters that follow will expand on
the principles and practices introduced here.

Three Guiding Principles

It is helpful and even necessary to have a framework to guide
collaborative project management. Any framework is born from a
set of guiding principles and our three are as follows:

- Collaborate to Innovate: Projects deliver the innovations

groups need to progress and projects are best delivered in a
collaborative fashion with the entire team fully engaged.
- Lead to Succeed: The most successful and enjoyable projects
get real leadership from both the project manager and all of the
team members.
- Evolve to Grow: Project managers, project teams, and
organizations require the capability to successfully manage
projects to grow and prosper. Successful collaborative project
management is not a capability acquired in a day; it evolves and
develops in time.

The Framework
Any framework needs practices to help deliver on the guiding
principles. Presented here is a diagram of the above three guiding
principles and nine practices areas (described below).

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 Collaborative Project Management: A Handbook

Collaborate to Innovate
The practices of collaborative project management enable
individuals from different departments, offices, companies, and
even countries, to successfully complete a project. These practices
help fully engage all team members to contribute in a positive and
meaningful way to a successful project outcome. Critically, the
practices also provide guidance and processes for new and
‘accidental or occasional project managers’ who lack formal project
management training.
- Plan Together: It is best to have the team who will deliver the
project involved in planning. The quality of the resulting plan
will be better and the engagement of all team members will be
higher. This is probably common sense to most of us, but we
know that common sense is not that common!
- Act Together: It is very desirable to have the team act in
unison on the project. We all want our project teams to know
what is happening and to know what they have to do to ensure
project success.
- Track Together: The extended team (project manager, team
members, senior executives, customers, etc.) will need to know
what is and is not happening on the project in order to
constructively contribute to the project outcome.
Tool Support: Since many of the team will have no formal or
even informal project management training, it is important to make
templates, stages, and steps easily accessible in a project site to
guide the collaborative project management practices.

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 Collaborative Project Management – A Framework

Lead to Succeed
It goes without saying that leadership is required to successfully
deliver an amazing project, but what does this mean in practice?
- Personal Leadership: The entire project team, and especially
the project manager, need to be at their best and will ideally
bring their ‘A game’ to the project. The team need to be in a
good place personally and this, while desirable on so many
levels, does not happen by accident. This requires investment
and personal management in areas such as energy, attitude,
awareness, personality and time-management. As it happens,
this level of personal leadership also develops the same
practices and habits that lead to a happier and healthier
personal life.
- Situational Leadership: A project team encounters many
common repeated situations, including various types of
meetings, decisions, variable performance, awkward
communications, unclear roles and responsibility lines, etc. It is
helpful and important to have patterns, practices, and
protocols to successfully manage these recurring situations.
- Cultivate Leadership Approaches: The world is evolving to
a place where more and more of our people want, deserve, and
are being given leadership responsibilities. In many cases this
responsibility is not accompanied by line management
authority, nor does it need to be. This ask or grant requires that
each person have leadership approaches that they can call on,
and that these approaches are adaptable and compatible with
the requirements of collaborative project management. It is
also important that the organization develops project and team
models designed to accommodate and encourage these higher
levels of leadership.

Evolve to Grow
Success in the practices of collaborative project management and
leadership, as described above, requires a focused investment. This
success will not come by accident, but is extremely achievable with
the right approach. Allied to this we all need our organizations, and
that means our people, to grow to better manage the projects and
challenges we face today, and also to be ready to manage the

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unimagined projects and challenges of the future. At the same time

everyone is very busy with the day job, so this growth tends to be
taken for granted or in some cases ignored.
The REP protocol (described in Section 1 of this handbook and
summarized here) presents a process comprised of three very
simple but trusted practices to help individuals and thus
organizations grow in a gradual but sure manner. REP stands for
Research, Execute, and Post-Mortem and is a play on the word
‘repetition’. Repetition is, of course, an important aspect of
mastery. As a recap:
- Research: This first phase is spent seeking out and learning
new practices, skills and ideas. This phase should be a fun
exploration. Any interesting findings are logged in a REP
Journal. The Research phase ends by selecting a handful of
practices to try.
- Execute: This second phase is where time is allocated to
experiment with these new ideas, to try them for real. The
Execute phase is necessary to see how the practices from one
arena can be adopted locally. It is in this doing that much of
the real learning takes place.
- Post-Mortem: This third phase allows the time and space to
reflect on the outcomes of the new practices. This reflection
requires a time out, however short. The end result of the Post-
Mortem may likely be a commitment to REP again straight
away or at some later date, to add more practices or to sharpen
existing ones.
REP is designed to be repeated any time new skills, habits,
practices are desired. In summary, REP is a very simple, efficient,
and effective personal change management process.

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 Project Management versus Process Management

Project Management versus Process

Management
Introduction
This chapter explores the relationship between projects, processes,
(starting in 1776!) and process improvement.

The Essence
A project is a temporary, one-off endeavor with specific objectives.
A process can be defined as a series of repeated actions that
produce something or lead to a particular repeatable result.
Understanding the difference between a project and a process will
help you to apply the right approach to upcoming work.

Definition of Process
In 1776, Adam Smith wrote "An Inquiry into the Nature and
Causes of the Wealth of Nations", and as a result, the poor man is
often blamed for creating modern day capitalism! Consider the
following description from the first few pages in his book and ask
yourself: is this a project or a process?
”One man draws out the wire, another straights it, a third cuts it, a
fourth points it, a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head: to make
the head requires two or three distinct operations: to put it on is a particular
business, to whiten the pins is another ... and the important business of
making a pin is, in this manner, divided into about eighteen distinct
operations, which in some manufactories are all performed by distinct
hands, though in others the same man will sometime perform two or three of
them.”
As I'm sure you’ve guessed, the making of pins in this manner is
definitely a process. However, the initial set up of the pin factory is
a major project. Subsequent improvements or modifications to the
factory might also be treated as projects.

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Process Improvement Models

The Deming “PDSA” Model

If you're serious about implementing and improving project
management across a group, a knowledge of process improvement
models can be extremely helpful.
W. Edwards Deming, an American quality expert, was brought
to Japan in the aftermath of World War II to help in the
reconstruction of the nation. Deming had been influenced by the
Shewhart cycle from 1939 and brought what was later called the
Deming wheel to Japan in 1950. The Deming wheel was PDCA
(Plan, Do, Check, Action). Deming himself later changed the cycle
to PDSA (Plan, Do, Study, Act). In later years the Plan, Do, Check,
Act or Plan, Do, Study, Act cycles have been used as instruments
of continuous improvement for processes. They've been famously
associated with the Japanese quality assurance, total quality control,
and continuous process improvement movements.

These simple but powerful cycles can be very helpful in

improving project management in an organization. Think of it in
the following terms:
- Plan the process change you want to introduce
- Do or implement the process change
- Check or study the impacts of the change
- Act on this to make any adjustments that are appropriate.
And some time later start the cycle again, so the cycle of
improvement continues. Using PDSA properly you're in a constant
cycle of very positive continuous process improvement.

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 Project Management versus Process Management

ISO 9000 Series

The ISO 9000 series can also be very powerful for process
improvement. The essence of the ISO 9000 series is that you, in an
intelligent way, decide what you're going to do and write this up as
a set of policies, procedures, and standards. You then train
everybody in the enactment of these approaches. And finally you
continuously check how you're doing against that which you said
you would do. These continuous checks include audits and
associated corrective actions. It's possible to use the standard either
as a mechanism for improving quality internally and / or to get the
quality of your process assured by an external agency, which would
result in the award of an ISO 9000 certification for your process
(but not your product).

The CMM – Capability Maturity Models

To round out this very brief introduction to process improvement
models, it's worth adding a short explanation of the Capability
Maturity Model (CMM). This model came out of work facilitated at
Carnegie Mellon University in the late 1980s. The work is
sometimes much maligned because, as with all models, it can be
abused by people who want to prove they're better than they really
are. However, the essence of the model has some really excellent
thinking.

The model is essentially a five level model and any process can
be at any one of these levels.

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 Collaborative Project Management: A Handbook

1. Initial: Level One is characterized by being chaotic or

informal. You could say that all processes are at least at
Level One!
2. Repeatable: To say that a process is repeatable means that it
can work pretty much every time. However, it tends to be
overly dependent on the heroics of a small number of
people to make it so. If these people leave the organization,
the process would more than likely fail to deliver the
intended results.
3. Defined: At this level, there is a thought-out and
documented step-by-step set of policies, processes,
procedures, and work instructions, and ideally, tools to
automate some of the steps. The idea is that new people can
come and go and the process will guide whoever is involved
in that particular process. Of course, there's an implicit
assumption that people have to be trained and capable of
executing the process, but it's at least defined.
4. Managed: Here, the process has a high degree of
management oversight, is instrumented, and measured. With
these metrics, we know where we're at. We might not always
like it, but we'll know how the process is performing.
5. Optimizing: Finally, Level Five, is called Optimizing. Note
that it's not called optimized as this would indicate an end
point. Processes are dynamic, and as such, we need to tweak
and optimize them from time to time. The practice here is to
use the metrics and other information to make decisions to
implement as process changes. In earlier levels, we have
basic checks in place and we make changes because we think
or believe they make sense. But at Level Five, metrics and
data are also guiding us intelligently to make changes.
Can you see how this CMM might apply to the process of
project management in your organization? Maybe you can decide
what level your project management process is at. Is it Level One,
Two, Three, Four or is it at Level Five? Identifying this current
level of project management will help you decide what investment
comes next on your collaborative project management journey.

REP versus PDSA, ISO 9000, CMM

In an earlier chapter we presented the REP approach as a personal

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 Project Management versus Process Management

change management process. This chapter presented PDCA,

PDSA, ISO 9000, and CMM as organizational process
improvement models. I am sure you can see the overlaps and
similarity of thinking.

Exercise
This might be a good time to take a time out and
to think through some of the ideas presented in
this chapter. The following questions may well be
worth asking and answering for yourself:
- What are some of the examples of critical processes that
you have in your group?
- Do some of these processes need definition or
improvement or both?
- Do you have a process for project management or some
aspects of project management? Do you have a process
defined for collaborative project management?
- Based on your thinking, what are the next actions necessary
for you and / or your group on the process management or
process improvement front, especially as it relates to
collaborative project management?

32
 Section 3. Collaborative Project
Management – The Stages
Get a Fast Start – Track Projects
Introduction
This chapter outlines how you can easily track projects before you
start fully managing them. And this, in turn, ironically will help you
manage them!
“The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”
– Mark Twain

The Essence
Why begin with merely tracking projects? Many groups are not
ready for full collaborative project management and some projects
are too small to get the complete treatment. What do you track?
Just track the high level project details. This is the kind of project
information that is probably floating around on an Excel file. But
we'll suggest you do this with a little bit more style, ease, and
substance!

Exercise
Do you see a need for this kind of simple project
tracking and do you have a satisfactory mechanism
to do so?

Why Only Project Tracking?

Why would we resort to, or maybe start with, tracking projects
rather than fully managing projects? Well there are at least two
reasons. Firstly, the project might be quite small, or is a project you
find very easy to deliver as you have done it many times before. In
these scenarios it doesn't make sense to deploy a very large amount

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 Get a Fast Start – Track Projects

of project management. The second reason is you and the team

may not be ready to use a large amount of collaborative project
management. This can be the case even when the project deserves
and needs lots of project management. This could be due to a lack
of experience, a lack of time, a lack of budget; whatever the reason
the team is just not ready for large amounts of project
management. This can be a tough but honest call to make. In both
of these cases, it seems wise to start with project tracking and to do
that well. This is an important first step towards collaborative
project management.

A Project Management Spectrum

In this simple project management spectrum we have four

sections. The sections go left to right, from Ultra-Lite to Lite to
Standard and to Structured, depicting different amounts of project
management. You will note that there are arrows on both ends of
the spectrum. This reflects the fact that even though you start in
one place, for example Lite, you might move left to Ultra-Lite at a
later point or you may move right on the spectrum toward
Standard. This reflects the reality that different projects require
differing amounts of project management at different times.

Exercise
- Where are your projects on this project
management spectrum? (i.e., how much
project management are they receiving in
reality?)
- Where do you think your projects should
be on this spectrum? (i.e., how much project management
do they need?)

We at BrightWork and our customers find this spectrum very

honest and extremely real. The next chapter, ‘Initiate the Project’,
offers more details on choosing the level of project management
needed.

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A Natural Order
A natural companion to the project management spectrum is the
aforementioned “Start|Evolve” approach. Many BrightWork
customers successfully start with a reasonable and modest amount
of project management to give their organizations immediate
visibility into what's going on by tracking the projects. They can
then decide what levels of control to exert. They will gradually
evolve to improve and mature their project management practices
with a high degree of flexibility. This is reminiscent of the agile
approach to project delivery, which advocates delivering little and
often so that customer feedback can be early and frequent.

Suggestion: Track the Essentials

Starting with the Lite or even Ultra-Lite side of the project
management spectrum, we're going to track the essentials of the
project. These might include:
- Project name
- Project manager
- Type of project
- Customer or department that the project is for
- Required finish date from the customer
- Likely finish date based on the current progress
- Overall health of the project, as determined by the project
manager
- And lastly, project status. Is this a project that's in trouble?
Just tracking these essential key items and reporting on them,
even if it's only to yourself, will help you better manage the project.
If you track them and report them to the other stakeholders in the
project, the team members, senior management and also the
customer, you will inevitably get feedback to better manage the
project. It's not that the other items like tasks, issues, risks, and
change requests are not happening; it's that they're not formally
being tracked in a consistent, central, and transparent manner. Here
we are suggesting that you begin by more formally tracking the
essentials.

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 Get a Fast Start – Track Projects

If you can’t beat them join them!

If I were to ask you “what are the most common project
management tools in use in your organization”, you might well
reply some combination of Microsoft Excel and Microsoft
Outlook. It makes sense that these are in widespread use for
project management because they're so easy to use. You will often
see a status report typed into an Excel file and sent around on
email. While these Excel project status files have many advantages,
they also have many disadvantages. Can you tell if the Excel file
you're looking at is the latest version? Maybe you are not sure who
updated it and when it was last updated. You're not sure if other
Excel files are floating around. Are other people looking at a
different version of the file and making decisions based on this?
There is also the disadvantage that multiple people can’t safely
make updates at the same time. But despite the disadvantages, the
ease of use makes Excel arguably the most popular project
management tracking tool on the planet. As they say, if you can't
beat them, why not join them!

Use Excel inside SharePoint

Many of our BrightWork customers will use a Projects Tracker
inside of SharePoint that mimics the ease of use of Microsoft
Excel. With this Projects Tracker approach, you can track the
essentials of the project in a grid that looks and acts like Microsoft
Excel.

This approach has many advantages. There is a single source of

project truth. The tracker is as easy to use as Microsoft Excel in its
grid style and shape. It also has a version history and an audit trail,
so you can go back to prior versions and see who made what
changes to the project status and when. In this instance, you're not
in the Excel hell that can sometimes happen with project tracking.
The other advantage is that when you save work on this tracker,

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 Collaborative Project Management: A Handbook

it transforms into a dashboard, which is more attractive and looks

the way people would expect a project management dashboard to
appear.

Traffic lights icons and high priority signs are depicted

graphically. You can see multiple projects in one place and click to
get more detail. You can also click to get the version history
associated with this project. You're essentially getting the benefits
of Excel in terms of ease of use without the associated
disadvantages that are presented for project tracking.
If you subscribe to this project spectrum approach for any of
the aforementioned reasons, then why not use a Projects Tracker
inside of SharePoint in the same manner as you use Excel? It's a
great way to get a lot of projects reported and get project
management started in a consistent manner. It gives a quick win
without a lot of fuss. If your organization is currently submitting
project updates on Excel, it's an easy transition to make.

Summary of Track Projects

If you start on the left hand side of the spectrum in an Ultra-Lite
way and you're tracking the essentials of a project, you can then
move more easily to the right hand side into a Lite way and start
adding in work items for your projects such as tasks or deliverables
or even issues.

You get the quick start via projects tracking with the option to
add in the tracking of work items on the project. This way, you get

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 Get a Fast Start – Track Projects

both project and work tracking. This is a very easy transition for
people to make in an organization.
The key point to remember is by tracking these key items about
your project and reporting on them, even if it's only to yourself,
you and the rest of the team will better manage the project. It's an
effective and easy start on the road to collaborative project
management.

Exercise
Start: Check if some of the projects in your group
are such that a simple tracker will suffice and
maybe start to practice managing this way, even if
just reporting to yourself.
Evolve: Offer to develop a standard tracker for your group and get
it approved. You could then get other managers and departments
to use this new tracker with everybody singing off the same hymn
sheet as they say.

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 Collaborative Project Management: A Handbook

Stage 1 – Initiate the Project

Introduction
This chapter will walk you through the first stage of collaborative
project management: Initiation.
“A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a
single step.”
– Lao-Tzu (604-531 BC), Chinese Philosopher

The Essence
Why would you be interested in formally initiating a project? Well,
fools rush in! As a project manager, you want to know what you're
getting before you officially start. At this stage, you need to secure
resources for the project and ideally enlist the support of a project
sponsor.

Exercise
- How do you initiate new projects?
- Is this the same way that everyone else in
your group initiates projects? Or are there
other methods in practice?

Initiate the Project in 3 Steps

This handbook breaks each of the five stages of Collaborative
Project Management into three steps labelled A, B and C. The
Initiate stage is about starting the project using these three steps:

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 Stage 1 – Initiate the Project

Forgiveness or Permission!
Sometimes it's easier to ask for forgiveness than seek permission,
and there are certainly times that this is very true. However, when
initiating new projects, this is not typically the case. Ask for
permission to initiate the project so that you have the resources,
and more importantly, the sponsorship lined up in your favor.
There are many times on the project that you will be able to crash
through the barriers yourself. However, every now and again you
will need the project sponsor to help you deal with tough situations
or make difficult decisions. Now is the time to put that
sponsorship in place.
Of course the other reason to ask for permission to start the
project is as a professional courtesy. You owe it to your
management team and sponsors to let them know that you're
starting a new project in the organization.

A. Get the Project Approved, Sponsored and

Resourced
The first step is to get the project approved, sponsored and
resourced. A good question to ask is what might you need for this
step? It’s very likely that you will at least need a meeting with the
project sponsor. It's also possible that the sponsor will request a
written project proposal, a project charter, or a project statement.
Even if the sponsor doesn't request one, it's a good idea to produce
one for yourself and the rest of the project team.
A project charter or statement may contain the following
information:
- Project identification
- Project description
- Project objectives, goals, deliverables
- Resources and budget needed
- Priority of the project
- Organization/customer that the project is for
- Proposed project manager
- Type of the project
- Status of the project
- When the project should start and finish
- Any other assumptions about the project.

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 Collaborative Project Management: A Handbook

Certain projects will also require a high level plan at this early
stage. The amount of information and process needed for this first
step will depend on the project in hand, the organization you're
working for, and the preferences of the project sponsor you're
trying to sign up.
The sponsor will ultimately decide if the project is going to go
ahead or will bring you in front of the people that can make that
determination. The sponsor should also be able to allocate the
people you need to work on the project and free up any other
resources such as budget. During the process, you've also started to
work and collaborate with your project sponsor, which is a very
important relationship for you to have. From time to time, you will
need this air cover. The ideal minimum exit criteria for this step is
that you have secured approval and sponsorship.
You have now taken the first step as a new project manager.
Congratulations on having started the journey.

B. Decide the Project Management Process

As they say, be careful what you ask for, you just might get it!
Once the project is approved, you need to decide how to manage
the project and how much project management rigor you will
apply. As depicted in the diagram below, some projects require a
lighter touch and some require much more project management.

Your organization may have guidelines or templates for certain

project types, which will make this step simpler as you will be
selecting a pre-defined approach and then perhaps tailoring it. This
will make your life easier as long as the local guidelines are sensible!
We have found that sometimes organizations expect way too much
project management. In some of these cases, the project manager is

41
 Stage 1 – Initiate the Project

not experienced enough to utilize this larger amount of project

management. In other cases, the amount of project management is
simply too large for the type of project at hand.
The outcome of this step may have been determined by the
prior approval step if your hands-on project sponsor gave you a
process to follow.
If you do not have local guidance, use this step to think through
the typical project management items and decide which ones you
need for your project. These items include:
- Project Statement / Project Definition / Project Charter
- Resources and budget needed
- Tasks
- Formal Work Breakdown Structure
- Teams, Roles and Responsibility Definition
- Documents / Deliverables
- Risks
- Contacts
- Decisions
- Goals
- Issues
- Change Request Documents
- Actions / To Do List
- Meetings (Agenda, Minutes and Actions)
- Status Reports
- Communications
- Conversations
- Processes and Procedures
- Lessons Learned.
This is not a definitive list but a good one to get you thinking.
Here you are deciding what project management you will sign up
for and what you will make transparent to the project team. For
example, you might decide to track issues in a list but not to
manage risks formally. However, this does not mean you will not
naturally carry out risk management. You may well consider and
take actions to mitigate risks in your own mind but you are not
committing to document or communicate these actions. You may
also find that some of these items will have been prepared or at
least started for the Project Approval in the prior step.

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 Collaborative Project Management: A Handbook

C. Create a Collaborative Project Site

This handbook assumes a collaborative project management
approach. It supposes you are acting as a project manager and not
as a project dictator. It assumes you want team members and
stakeholders to know what has happened and what needs to
happen so they are empowered to help you deliver and manage the
project. This handbook also presumes that you want to setup a
collaborative site to share this information. There are so many free
collaborative site options available today that this is no longer a big
assumption. We at BrightWork started using Lotus Notes back in
1995 for our projects but moved to SharePoint in 2000. As
mentioned earlier Microsoft SharePoint 2013 still has a free
version, Microsoft SharePoint Foundation, so you have no excuses!
Get collaborative in your project management approach.
The site you set up needs to mirror the approach to project
management that you will undertake. Below is a table depicting
some of the BrightWork templates to jumpstart your ideas. For
example, on the left you are following a lite approach and
managing with a few elements, e.g. Project Statement, Issues, and
Tasks. On the right, you are following a structured approach and
managing everything you can think of! You can start out with one
approach at the outset and later evolve as project needs dictate.

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 Stage 1 – Initiate the Project

Exercise
Start: Apply some of this guidance to your current
project. Maybe you deploy a collaborative site?
Perhaps you go look for a project sponsor? Even
if the project has started, it's never too late.
Evolve: Use the guidance in this chapter on your next project, or
perhaps recommend it to some of your colleagues for their
projects.

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 Collaborative Project Management: A Handbook

Stage 2 – Plan and Setup the Project

Introduction
This chapter will guide you through the steps to plan your project,
ideally collaboratively with your (new) project team.
“In all things, success depends upon previous
preparation, and without such preparation there is sure
to be failure.”
– Confucius (c550 – c478 BC) Chinese Philosopher

The Essence
As they say, failing to plan is planning to fail. At this stage, you
wish to collaboratively plan the main steps of the project with the
team.

Exercise
Now is a good opportunity for a short time out to
give you a chance to get your head into what we're
about to discuss. A few questions for you to do
just this:
- How do you plan new projects today?
- Is this the way everybody else in your group plans projects?
Or are there different processes in practice?

Plan and Setup the Project

As you enter this stage, your project is approved and you have
decided how to manage the project, or at least you have an outline
approach. Hopefully you have also set up a collaborative site. Now
it is time to earn your stripes, and plan and set up your project. For
the purpose of this handbook, I use the following three steps for
this stage:
A. Plan the Project

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 Stage 2 – Plan and Setup the Project

B. Desk Check the Project Plan

C. Notify the Team of their Responsibilities.

Planning – How Collaborative?

The question at this stage is how collaborative can or should your
planning be? How much should you involve your team in planning
the project? You have at least three options.
The first option is to bring the team together to execute the
aforementioned three steps. As a team, plan the project in a
workshop. Desk check the resulting project plan, again in a
workshop. Then you can easily notify relevant individuals of their
responsibilities because they're with you in that same planning
workshop.
The second option is to do all the planning work yourself
before bringing the team together to notify them of their
responsibilities.
The third option is to do a mix of the above two. By way of
example, Fintan (our VP of Engineering at BrightWork) and I did a
chunk of the initial planning for a release of the BrightWork
product on the Microsoft Office 365 platform and then brought in
the team to finish out the planning.
The first option, collaboratively working through the three
steps, is preferable. It requires more up front time, but has the
potential to save you time in the long run. If it's well executed,
you'll get a better result, i.e. a better plan. It will certainly generate
more understanding and buy in from your project team.

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 Collaborative Project Management: A Handbook

It may be obvious which approach will work best for your

project. If you are finding it difficult to choose, you will find the
later chapter ‘Make Good Decisions’ useful.
In summary, it is key to involve team members as much as
possible in the project setup and planning.

A. Plan the Project

The thinking in this handbook is that, at a minimum, you will need
a Project Definition/Statement and also a task list (of some sort)
on most projects. Additional artifacts (e.g. issues, risks, etc.) should
have been decided in the Initiation Stage of the project (unless you
skipped this stage!). Four sub-steps to plan the project are as
follows:
i. Complete the Project Statement
ii. Define and Allocate the Tasks
iii. Add the Other Project Artifacts Needed
iv. Assign the Work.

i. Complete the Project Statement

The Project Statement is also known as the Project Profile, Project
Charter, or Project Definition. This is the master project document
which communicates the intention of the project and other high-
level information. In this document you will want to make very
clear what the goal of the project is. It is important for all involved
to know where the finish line is. Some of this Project Statement
information (e.g. status, scheduled finish date, etc.) gets updated
throughout the course of the project. In many cases, Project
Statement information is used to collate project status reports as
the project progresses. The Project Statement that you are
completing here was likely started in the ‘Project Initiation’ stage, as
described in the prior chapter.

ii. Define and Allocate Tasks

Decide what tasks are needed to complete the project successfully
or at least the tasks you know about at this stage. It is possible that
a simple task list will suffice. Sometimes you will decide to organize
your project by work packages, key deliverables, or to some
lifecycle (e.g. a software development lifecycle or a new product

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 Stage 2 – Plan and Setup the Project

introduction lifecycle). The lifecycle decision will dictate the tasks

needed and the way they are organized. You will typically elect to
use either a simple task list or a WBS (work breakdown structure)
that has parent and sub-tasks, and dependencies between tasks (i.e.
one task cannot start until the previous task finishes). At this stage
you may also elect to use the schedule list in BrightWork or
perhaps Microsoft Project to draw up the task list and assignments
if you are working with a WBS.
If you use Microsoft Project to create your WBS, you should be
aware that Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Project
Professional have very tight integration with a two-way sync
feature.

iii. Add Other Project Artifacts

Once you have defined your Project Statement and project tasks,
you can now generate any extra artifacts required to manage your
project. If you are lucky enough to have local guidance, you can use
these templates. If you are really lucky, you can create the artifacts
using templates pre-loaded in your collaborative site. Candidate
artifacts include goals, documents, issues, risks, etc. In essence,
these are the project management sub-processes for your project.
Ideally, the list of artifacts required will have been decided in the
second step (Decide the Project Management Process) of the prior
Initiate stage.

iv. Assign the Work

I have seen some project managers delegate all or most the work
on the project and not take their fair share of the load. This is not
right. Other project managers tend to do more work on the project
than they need to and often find it difficult to delegate. Given that
we are talking about collaborative project management, it is
especially important to remember that the project work can and
should be delegated.
“The way to get things done is not to mind who gets the credit
for doing them.”
– Benjamin Jowett (1817 – 1893) English scholar, essayist and priest

If your project is simple with a small team, you will know who
is free and not free. In this case, you will assign the tasks and

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 Collaborative Project Management: A Handbook

artifacts to your team members as you create them in the prior two
steps (“Define and Allocate Tasks” and “Assign the Work”).
Some organizations have a more formal definition of roles in
use. In this case, you will likely assign a generic role to a task or
artifact in the preceding two steps. You will next assign a person in
place of these generic roles. Using a project site with a list of tasks
and artifacts with generic pre-assigned roles is a quick way to set up
a new project. All you need to do is assign the person to the role.
In other cases, where the organization is very large and people
are committed to many projects, you will not know who is free. In
this scenario you will need to draft your plan to see who you need
and when. Then you will need to check resource availability before
you can make an assignment. In certain organizations you will also
need to formally request resources.
At the end of this step, you might also want to check the
resource loading, so you can find and fix any over allocations due
to the new work assignments you have just made.

B. Desk Check Project Plan

“If you would hit the mark, you must aim a little above it;
every arrow that flies feels the attraction of earth.”
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 - 1882), US poet and writer

By this stage, your project should be well planned. It is important

to have a step where you stand back and review the plan
thoroughly. Now that you have created lots of tasks and artifacts,
you should look at the entire project in a Gantt (time sequenced)
chart. You will very likely see adjustments to make before the plan
goes live.
It is also a good idea to have some of your colleagues peer
review your plan.

The Time, Quality, Cost Trade-off

As part of your desk check, you and the team should be aware of
the time–quality–cost triangle or trade-off discussed earlier in the
handbook. These conflicting constraints are normal on a project
and to be expected. You are trying to balance the scope that you
need to deliver on the project with the time available to achieve the
right level of quality for the cost and resources that you're allowed

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 Stage 2 – Plan and Setup the Project

to spend on the project. At this point, you’ll want to make

decisions on where to trade-off now or later as needs be. It’s also a
good idea to document these decisions and perhaps run them by
your project sponsor if some of the trade-offs are significant. The
key point is that thinking about the project in terms of time–
quality–cost will likely lead to some revision of the planning you
have done up to this point. This is positive, because it will protect
your plan and make it better before you start into execution.

C. Notify Team of Responsibilities

It is all very well to plan a project in detail but you need to let team
members know the plan for success. High quality communication
increases the likelihood your plan for success will come true.
Project team members are very smart and capable so be sure to
empower them by letting them know what is going on. This is the
essence of collaborative project management. Three mechanisms to
manage this communication include:
i. Involve your team on some or all of the prior planning steps.
ii. Host a project kick-off meeting to introduce team members to
the project and walk them through the project site.
iii. Set up Automated Reminders
- Enable your collaborative project site to automatically notify
all new work assignments via email.
- Set up the “My Work” report or dashboard on your
collaborative project site.
- Use scheduled emails with nudges for upcoming or late work.
For example, early Monday mornings send an email of the
work due for the week and then on Thursday morning send
another email with work still open and due this week.

Exercise
Start: Apply some of this guidance to your current
project, even if the project started.
Evolve: Use the guidance in this chapter on your next
project.

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 Collaborative Project Management: A Handbook

Stage 3 – Work the Project

Introduction
This chapter will guide you through the project team member
experience on collaborative projects and will refer to:
- Team member commitment
- Team member process / rhythm
- Team member responsibilities.
“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they
make as they fly by.”
– Douglas Adams (1952-2001) English Humorist

The Essence
Why do we need a stage “Work the Project”? Well, this is where
the real work takes place. This is where the actual project work
occurs. You also need to be mindful that team members are
extremely distractible, as you can see in the wonderful quote above
from Douglas Adams.
What does this stage entail? In summary, you want to give the
team members some direction on how to proceed, how to work on
the project, and how to collaborate. This will enable the team
members to step up to the plate and help you to collaboratively
manage the project.

Exercise
A few questions for you to help you get your head
into this chapter:
- How do you and the other team members
work and collaborate on existing projects?
- How do you work together to deliver on the project objective?
- What is the approach that your team members use? What is
their work rhythm?

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 Stage 3 – Work the Project

Team Member Commitment

Your project has now started and everybody (hopefully!) knows
what they are meant to do. In a collaborative project, you are
essentially asking the team members for three commitments as
described here. You might even try these words if you are very new
to collaborative project management!

A. Find work
Using one of the many notifications (e.g. My Work report,
automated emails, etc.), find your work so you know what you are
committed to delivering for the project.

B. Do work
Naturally enough, go do the work! In many cases, the actual work
products (e.g. a proposal or design) can be created and updated in
the collaborative project site.

C. Update progress on work

Use the datasheets or forms provided in the collaborative site to
record your progress on what is done or in progress, and use the
project site to record any issues that need attention.

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 Collaborative Project Management: A Handbook

Team Member Process / Rhythm

It is very likely that the team members on your projects will be
involved in more than one project and will have other work
responsibilities. As such, they will find it difficult to keep up with
all the deadlines. In fact, do not be surprised if some of the team
members are so focused on work they are not too worried about or
focused on any deadlines.
As the project manager, you will want to ensure that team
members understand their responsibilities. Using the simple 3-step
explanation above (find work, do work, update work) is an easy
way to communicate this expectation. Making this commitment
clear is something you may wish to do at the project kick-off
meeting. You will also want to give team members a weekly rhythm
to follow, for example:
- [Monday] Review the latest plan and your personal
commitments (via dashboards or automated emails)
- [Everyday] Do lots of work and make great progress!
- [Late Thursday] Make a progress update on your tasks and
issues in the project site (if not already done)
- [Friday at 10am] Weekly team meeting for 30 minutes.

Team Member Responsibilities

It is a very positive and progressive step to talk to team members
about the responsibility they are expected to carry on a
collaborative project. In addition to the suggestions above, you can
ask collaborative team members to have the courage to:
- Take responsibility given
- Contribute to the team
- Challenge the direction respectfully
- Accept the agreed team direction
- Participate in the speed of the project
- Always take positive actions.

The 4Cs of an Ideal Team

The later chapter, ‘Cultivate Your Leadership Style’, offers lots of
advice on selecting a team model for collaborative project
management. For now, here is one suggestion for the ideal
dynamics of a high performing team. This is the atmosphere you

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 Stage 3 – Work the Project

wish for your project team.

- Collegiate / Companions (friendly and enjoyable with no

need for fear)
- Collaborative (on the one team and on the one project
helping each other)
- Challenging (to each other – but respectfully) with the
Conflict required for innovation. Be comfortable asking
and answering uncomfortable questions.
- Can do attitude – and no such thing as I/we can’t.

Exercise
Start: Apply some of this guidance to your current
project, even if the project has started.
Evolve: Use the guidance in this chapter on your
next project. Or perhaps recommend it to some
of your colleagues for their projects.

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 Collaborative Project Management: A Handbook

Stage 4 – Track and Re-Plan the Project

Introduction
This chapter will take you through the steps involved in
collaboratively tracking and re-planning your project.
“There is nothing in this world constant, but inconstancy.”
– Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), Irish poet, essayist and cleric

The Essence
Why do we need to track and re-plan the project? Remember the
advice from the Prussian Army General when he said that no plan
will ever survive the first encounter with the enemy?
What do we do in this stage? We actively track and honestly re-
plan the project with the team. It's quite difficult to do this
sometimes, but it's that simple. This is what we need to do.

Exercise
At this stage, it would be good to ask yourself:
- How do you track and re-plan projects?
- Is this the way everyone else in your
group tracks and re-plans projects, or are
there other ways and practices?

Track and Re-Plan the Project

As the team are working through their assignments, it is good to
remember Murphy’s Law: “that which can go wrong, will go wrong!”
There are some project managers I know who claim Murphy was
an optimist!
Some tasks may be ahead of schedule, but almost certainly,
some are falling behind. One thing you can be sure of is that the
project is not running exactly to the plan you started with. That is
why it is called a plan! Allied to this, other unanticipated problems

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 Stage 4 – Track and Re-Plan the Project

or issues may have emerged.

In this fourth stage, we will help you understand the three steps
needed to track where the project is at, re-plan, and communicate
the newly adjusted plan. We suggest you follow these steps:
A. Check and understand the project's progress
B. Find and manage exceptions (e.g. issues, risks and change
requests)
C. Re-plan the project.

A. Check and Understand Project Progress

By fair means or foul, you need to figure where the project is
before you can re-plan, or before you and the team re-plan
together. You need to know which tasks are ahead of schedule and
which tasks are falling behind. Below are three simple ways that
you can get this information.

i. Virtual Check
This is “collaborative project management” so be careful not to
waste time asking people for basic project information that they
have entered into a collaborative project site. Rather than calling
everyone for a status update, you should be able to examine the
various (project, issue, work, resource) reports, notebooks, and
conversations on the collaborative project site you set up.
If your team members are following the simple guidelines in
Stage 3 of this guide (“Work the Project”), you will have plenty of
project updates to review from the comfort of your own desk. A
sample set of reports to review in the project site might be:

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 Collaborative Project Management: A Handbook

- Home page to get a quick project status

- Overdue work
- Work by assignee
- The full task list (in a Gantt view)
- Resource utilization
- Issues
- Status of your own work!

ii. Individual Check

MBWA – ‘Managing by Walking About’ is one of the oldest forms
of management. Walk about, phone about, or talk to the team
members and customers to get their take on the project status.
Remember – this is collaborative project management, so your
team members will expect you to show up!

iii. Team Check

You do not want to have project meetings for the sake of meetings
so you do need to be careful with how these are run. More to
follow later in the “Manage Meetings” chapter of this handbook!
Here is a sample five-point agenda that you as a new project
manager might consider:
a) Status and Health of the Project
b) Issues : Review, discuss and resolve (in so far as possible) any open
issues
Project meetings can easily get derailed and run over time,
so it is key to use the time to solve problems as a team.
Not all issues will be resolved at the project meeting but
discussing the issues will surface them for further
deliberation.
c) Next: Look at upcoming tasks
It is good to look at what is up next. It makes people
aware and helps them focus on the essential work
upcoming. While the team is together, it is a good time to
get the varied inputs of team members on key tasks
scheduled to start soon.
d) Achieved : Look at tasks achieved recently or at least the
milestones
Many project meetings over-run in my experience! You
need to be a really organized facilitator to have meetings

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 Stage 4 – Track and Re-Plan the Project

start and finish on time. If you know that project

meetings will over-run, you should not start the meeting
with this item as team members will tend to enjoy talking
about what was achieved last week, and this may eat most
of the meeting.
e) Other Business

While you need not follow this agenda, it is important to have

some sort of standard agenda or meetings will not be energizing or
effective. You want meetings to be both.
“There are only two qualities in the world: efficiency and
inefficiency; and only two sorts of people: the efficient and the
inefficient.”
– George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Irish writer, dramatist and critic

B. Find and Manage Exceptions

You now know where the project is at, but don’t start re-planning
just yet! You should check for outstanding exceptions. Exceptions
on a project may come in many forms but issues, risks, and change
requests are the most common.
You will want to resolve any open issues you can to remove
schedule roadblocks; it could be that the issue’s resolution changes
your plan. Similarly, look at open risks and decide if you need a
mitigation plan to reduce the likelihood of the risks transpiring. In
some cases, what was once a risk is now a reality, and contingency
steps are needed.
You may also need to process project change requests, which
often means consulting with team members and possibly project
sponsors to see what course they advise and authorize. Approving
a change request can impact your project, so best to know this
impact before you start the re-planning in earnest.
As a new project manager, it is important not to be afraid to
make adjustments.
“Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on
not changing one’s mind.”
– William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965), English writer,
dramatist and physician

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 Collaborative Project Management: A Handbook

C. Re-Plan the Project

Some project managers are natural re-planners and do this daily as
the project progresses. Others are so busy, re-planning itself needs
to be logged as a project task. Styles and personalities come into
play here. Some people embrace change and love re-planning and
some decidedly do not!
Here are three sub-steps you might consider for this re-plan
step, whether you do it as necessary or at a set time every week:
i. Re-assign Work and Send Notifications
ii. Report to and Work with the Appropriate Stakeholders
iii. Tailor the Project Site as Needed.

i. Re-assign Work and Send Notifications

By this stage, you have gathered enough information to re-plan the
project. In reality, you were making some adjustments as you
executed the preceding two steps, but you need to perform the
remaining changes before you formally re-publish and re-
communicate the plan.
a) Project Redefinition
The project is defined and laid out in a series of artifacts, e.g.
project statement, tasks, issues, etc. Updating these can be as
simple as traversing the lists in the project site and making
adjustments.
b) Project Re-Assignments
If the structure or workloads of your project have changed,
you will need to reassign work to different team members. At
this stage, you should also find and fix any over assignments.
c) Notifications
Check that the changes are still going out through the
notifications mechanisms set up earlier in "Stage 2 - Plan and
Setup the Project".

ii. Report to and Work with the Appropriate Stakeholders

Now that the changes are made, you may need to update your
stakeholders. Your project sponsor will need to know what
changes are afoot. It is best that this news comes directly from you,
the project manager. This may involve some of the following:
- Deliver periodic status reports (printed, emailed or verbal)

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 Stage 4 – Track and Re-Plan the Project

- Raise exceptions including project change requests, top issues

and top risks
- Resolve sponsor level issues and apply the resolution through
project re-planning (if appropriate).

iii. Tailor the Project Site

In "Stage 1 - Initiate the Project" you decided how best to manage
the project. As the project progresses and naturally changes, you
may have to change how you manage to match the evolving needs
of the project. Maybe you opted not to manage risks very formally
at the outset, but you now believe that the project is changing at a
pace that is not healthy, so you now introduce more formalized risk
management. Or perhaps you initially decided to manage with
issues, risks, and change requests but now realize that this was too
much project management for this project. In this case, you scale
back the amount of project management you use.
As you periodically re-plan the project, you will do well as a
project manager to ensure you have ‘just the right’ amount of
management for the project in hand. At this stage of the process,
you can tailor the project site to mimic the desired amount of
collaborative project management.

Exercise
Start: Apply some of this guidance to your current
project.
Evolve: Use the guidance in this chapter on your
next project or perhaps even recommend it to
some of your colleagues for their projects.

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Stage 5 – Close the Project

Introduction
This chapter will guide you through how to benefit from an orderly
close to the project with your team.
“There must be a beginning of any great matter, but the
continuing unto the end until it be thoroughly finished yields
the true glory.”
– Sir Francis Drake (1540-1596) English navigator

The Essence
Why formally close the project? By definition, a project has a start
and finish so it needs to be closed out. If you don't shut it down
who will? In the immortal words of Francis Drake, this is where
you get the glory! What do you do in this stage? You and your team
will learn from the project as you close the project together.

Exercise
- How do you close projects? Or do you?
- Is this the way others in your group closes
projects, or are other practices in play?

Close the Project

As stated earlier, we can depict project management as follows:

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 Stage 5 – Close the Project

With this in mind, much of the project is about working the

project, figuring what is happening, and periodically re-planning to
ensure the end goals are met. Health warning! Project Management
does require a determination to keep going to the end, as there will
be difficult periods on most projects. Sections 4 and 5 include
many suggestions relating to physical and mental wellbeing, and
project leadership to help you overcome these challenges.
There comes a time when the project needs to be shut down.
As we know, one of the hallmarks of a project is a defined start and
a defined end. This is what marks a project out from processes and
continuous operations. A set of steps for an orderly project close
stage is as follows:
A. Close out the project site
B. Run project post-mortem and track lessons learned
C. Capture any useful modifications made to the project site
for use on future projects.

A. Close Out the Project Site

On an administrative note, you now have a live project site for a
project that is just finished. At a minimum, you should mark the
project closed so that anyone who visits the site can quickly see
that the project is completed. You also want to ensure that the
project does not appear in any current reports going to senior
management. It is usually best not to fully archive and hide the site
for a time. Normally when projects are completed, it is really hard
to get any information about them after a few months. The half-life
of project information is very short! It helps to look back at similar
project sites when planning new projects.

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B. Run Project Post-Mortem

No project ever goes perfectly. None! If you consider the approach
advocated in this handbook, we have suggested that you have
regular tracking and re-planning steps. This is essentially a tacit
admission that we are learning as we go on every project, as indeed
is the oft recommended use of the “Start|Evolve” approach to
collaborative project management.
If we can learn as we go, why not as we finish? There is a
tendency to take flight when the project is over and move to the
next one. However, the more you learn from the project you have
just completed, the more successful you will be with the project
you are about to start.
Remember this handbook is written primarily for “accidental”,
“occasional” or new project managers. These project managers
generally have no formal training and few experiences managing
projects, so any learning opportunity should not be wasted! It is
also important to remember that as a project manager, we have
been a leader of the project, but not the sole owner of its processes
and tasks. With this in mind, it is respectful to ask team members
what they thought of the project. Many project managers say they
do not have time to do project post-mortems. However, the same
professionals seem to have time to fall into the same traps and then
spend time fixing the issues. A stitch in time saves nine!
“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.”
– The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892)

To do a good post-mortem it is helpful to have a set of open

questions to ask. Questions naturally help the participants reflect
on the project from various angles, so the quality of feedback and
learning is best. A sample set of simple and open questions include:
- What went well on this project?
- What did not go so well on this project?
- What did we not do on this project that might have
helped?
- What specific actions should we take to adjust the
approach to the next project we do as a team?
Team members are very smart, so the real goal of this step is to
give people the time and the space to reflect on the project. This
step can be carried out simply enough once the time is set aside. A

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set of possible mechanisms include:

- Meeting: The team meets to talk through the project in a
facilitated session.
- Survey: You give people a survey in a collaborative project
site.
- Meeting and Survey: You do a combination of both; people
answer questions in advance and then attend a meeting to
thoroughly discuss the answers and make
recommendations.
On larger projects, you can run a “Lessons Learned”/
“Review” exercise modelled on this post-mortem at the end of
each project stage.

C. Capture Project Site Modifications

If the collaborative project site was modified as you went through
the project, you will want to review the adaptations and apply those
approved to the template for new project sites. This is a very
pragmatic and efficient way to improve your approach to project
management.

Exercise
Start: Apply some of this guidance to your current
project, even if the project has started.
Evolve: Use the guidance in this chapter on your
next project, or perhaps, even recommend it to
some of your colleagues for their projects.

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Build your Own Approach

Now that you are this far through this Collaborative Project
Management handbook, it would be important to reflect on how
you might manage your projects. Below is a summary of the stages
and steps presented in the preceding chapters.
“Whatever good things we build end up building us.”
– Jim Rohn (1930-2009) American entrepreneur, author and motivational
speaker

Low Adoption
Perhaps you just use the five high level stages as your guide:
1. Initiate the Project
2. Plan and Setup the Project
3. Work the Project
4. Track and Re-Plan the Project
5. Close the Project.

Medium Adoption
Maybe you use the five high level stages and some of the three
steps in each stage as your guide:
1. Initiate the Project
A. Get the Project Approved, Sponsored, and Resourced
B. Decide a Project Management Process
C. Create a Collaborative Project Site
2. Plan and Setup the Project
A. Plan the Project
B. Desk Check the Project Plan
C. Notify the Team of their Responsibilities
3. Work the Project
A. Find Work
B. Do Work
C. Update Progress on Work (recording any issues)
4. Track and Re-Plan the Project
A. Check and Understand the Project's Progress
B. Find and Manage Exceptions (e.g. issues, risks)
C. Re-Plan the Project

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 Build your Own Approach

5. Close the Project

A. Close Out the Project and the Project site
B. Run Project Post-mortem and Track Lessons Learnt
C. Capture any Useful Modifications (made to the
project site for use on future projects).

High Adoption
You may wish to use the five high level stages, some of the three
steps, and some of the associated sub-steps as your guide, when
building your own process / approach:
1. Initiate the Project
A. Get the Project Approved, Sponsored and Resourced
B. Decide a Project Management Process
C. Create a Collaborative Project Site
2. Plan and Setup the Project
A. Plan the Project
i. Complete the Project Statement
ii. Define and Allocate Tasks
iii. Add the other Project Artifacts Needed
iv. Assign the Work
B. Desk Check the Project Plan
i. Work the Time-Quality-Cost Trade Off
C. Notify the Team of their Responsibilities
i. Host a Project Kick-Off Meeting
ii. Enable your collaborative site with the facility
to email notifications on all new work
assignments
iii. On your collaborative site, setup an easy to
find “My Work” report / dashboard
iv. Setup scheduled emails with nudges for
upcoming or late work.
3. Work the Project
A. Find Work
B. Do Work
C. Update Progress on Work (recording any issues)
4. Track and Re-Plan the Project
A. Check and Understand the Project's Progress
i. Virtual Check
ii. Individual Check

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iii. Team Check

B. Find and Manage Exceptions (e.g. issues, risks)
C. Re-Plan the Project
i. Re-assign Work and Send Notifications
ii. Report to and Work with the Appropriate
Stakeholders
iii. Tailor the Project Site (to match the evolving
needs of the project)
5. Close the Project
A. Close Out the Project and the Project site
B. Run Project Post-mortem and Track Lessons Learnt
C. Capture any Useful Modifications (made to the
project site for use on future projects).

Exercise
We are not suggesting you should follow every
stage, step, and sub-step in sequence as presented
in this handbook. However, if you are new to
project management, you could walk through the
stages presented in summary above and design
your own collaborative project management approach using these
as a starting point.

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 Collaborative Project Management – Tool Support

Collaborative Project Management – Tool

Support
“What we have to learn to do, we learn by doing.”
– Aristotle (384 – 322 BC), Greek philosopher

You can and should put together a collaborative site (i.e. a virtual
project team room) for your project. Let’s assume you can consider
Microsoft SharePoint as the platform for your project site! If you
do, then at some stage you will want to extend SharePoint for
project management. To do this you can build or buy.
If you want a plug-in for SharePoint that supports the thinking
in this handbook, then do please look at BrightWork, a SharePoint-
based project management application that includes a range of
best-practice templates and advanced cross-project reporting.
BrightWork has a 30-day free trial that allows you to experiment
with applying the lessons in this handbook to a live collaborative
project management environment in SharePoint. With this free
trial, you can use BrightWork to:
1. Quickly create a project site that maps to this handbook
2. Easily plan and set up the project
3. Work on the project collaboratively with your team
4. Efficiently track and re-plan the project
5. Close out the project in an orderly way
6. Manage many such projects in one SharePoint environment.
With this trial, you will get access to all of the BrightWork
project and portfolio management templates, advanced reporting,
and a free 40-page training guide for managing projects using
Microsoft SharePoint.
On the BrightWork website, you will also find two free project
management templates built using out of the box SharePoint,
specifically designed to help manage projects.
If you do not elect to try BrightWork, I still hope you get the
wonderful benefits from some collaborative project management
software. This will make all the difference.

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 Section 4. Personal Leadership
Introduction
In the foregoing chapters, I talked about the stages, steps, and sub-
steps of collaborative project management. These are very
important. However, these steps alone do not help deliver a
successful project. Personal leadership is also required.
“The most powerful leadership tool you have is your own personal example.”
- John Wooden (1910-2010), UCLA Coach

Motivation: Why does Personal Leadership Matter?

The next section of the handbook talks through many facets of
personal leadership. As the saying goes, you can’t lead others if you
can’t lead yourself! If you are a new project manager and you work
on these areas of personal leadership, you will be a happier person
and you will also be a project manager that delivers better projects.
I would also say the reverse. If you are a project manager and you
are not in control of the main areas cited in this leadership section
of the handbook, then trouble awaits you around some corner.

The Essence
Knowing and leading yourself is the first step to leading others.
Situational leadership, leading your team over the finish line, will
follow. Meaningful, effective leadership begins with you, the
project manager. However, do not take my word. Please read and
judge for yourself. And if you believe that the information in the
following pages is likely to help you personally and professionally,
then do take the same REP and “Start|Evolve” approach to these
practices, as described in the earlier chapters of this handbook.

Exercise
What aspects of your life/personal leadership are
in great shape and worth keeping in great shape?
What aspects would you like to work / improve?

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 Manage Your Energy

Manage Your Energy

Introduction
There is a natural relationship between your personal energy levels
and your time management. This is a very important relationship;
the better and the healthier your energy levels are, the more you
will get out of your time. Consider this wonderful quote from
Aristotle:
“The energy of the mind is the essence of life.”

Motivation: Why Manage Your Energy?

Why are we talking about managing your energy in a collaborative
project management and leadership handbook? Let me give you
one reason. What if you have lots of free time but low energy?
Then it is very likely that you are not going to get much done.
This chapter asks five questions on the physical factors and five
questions on the emotional factors that affect your energy levels. I
will also discuss these factors and be bold enough to make
suggestions for you. I will cover time-management tips and tricks
in later chapters.

The Essence
If your personal energy is good (and you can make it so) then
anything is possible. However, if your personal energy is low and
even if you have all the time in the world, then you may achieve
very little.

Exercise
“How good are your energy levels? What gives
you positive energy? What drains your energy?”

Take a couple of minutes to do a personal audit

and commit to paper how you feel you are doing
with your energy levels as you start into this chapter.

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Energy Audit: The Physical Factors

The first part of the energy audit addresses five areas that affect the
physical side of your personal energy levels.

Physical Factor No. 1: Sleep

The first question to ask yourself is: Are you getting enough sleep?
Now, obviously, if you are not, there is no way you can have the
energy to do all that you need to.
Top performing athletes report that they typically need over
eight and a half hours sleep each night. For you, this number could
be different and that’s fine. It could be six hours and it could be
more. Either way, you definitely want to avoid a bad sleep cycle
that goes something like this:
- It is late at night and you have not done everything you
need to do.
- You are a bit tired and you take some food on-board to get
the required energy.
- The food is probably sugar-laden and might include coffee
or even alcohol.
- With this new false energy, you stay up a bit later and you
get stuff done.
- With the extra food in your system, you do not sleep as
well as you normally do.
- You then find it harder to get out of bed in the morning;
you skip breakfast and you do not exercise. And so the
cycle continues.
You need to break a cycle like this. There are many recent
studies showing the impact of sleep deprivation and poor sleep
quality on our health, energy levels, and work productivity. Every
aspect of your life can be improved with more, better quality sleep.

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The ideal goal is that you go to bed when you are tired and not
much later. Pretty radical, huh? Continuing with the ideal, you do
not set an alarm and instead wake up when you are refreshed. Now
that may be a stretch and it may take you a while to get there, but
this is an ideal scenario to aim for.
The key first question is ‘are you getting enough sleep?’ If not,
what are you going to do about this in order to maximize your
energy?

Physical Factor No. 2: Diet

Second question: How is your diet? How are your meals? Do they
maximize your energy?
For example, do you start your day properly with a healthy
breakfast? Do you eat a reasonable amount of fruit and vegetables
throughout the day? Have you a good intake of water? Do you
limit your intake of coffee? Do you curb eating late at night,
especially large meals? Are you avoiding excessive sugar intake?
In summary, does your food intake maximize your energy
levels? If not, how are you going to reorganize your time so that
you have time to eat and drink properly to give you lots of energy
so you can make the most of your time?

Physical Factor No. 3: Exercise

The third question in this part of the energy audit: Are you getting
enough physical exercise?
Now, of course you are going to ask, ‘Well what is enough?’.
Let me give you a simple definition of enough: more than you did
yesterday, more than last week, more than last month. Gradually
build it up bit by bit in a safe and healthy way. If you are doing a bit
more than before, you are doing enough.
What is the ultimate goal? The goal for the average person is to
exercise three to five times per week with each session lasting
about thirty to sixty minutes. You should try to get to a level of
moderate-to-strenuous exertion in these sessions.
There are many types of exercise; you just need to find the
pattern that works for you. If you are fortunate enough to live
close to the office, as I do, you can cycle to work as part of your
exercise routine. This is a very efficient and healthy use of time.
The benefits of exercise are well researched and one such study

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published in the April 2017 issue of the British Medical Journal 5

reports that “Cycle commuting was associated with a lower risk of
cardiovascular disease (CVD), cancer, and all cause mortality”. Perhaps you
are lucky enough to live by the sea and a swim in the ocean before
breakfast is a fabulous way to start your day. Really wakes you up
when you are tired, especially in the depths of winter! At
BrightWork, we have a sportsground with wonderful walking paths
and running tracks on our doorstep. Many of the team take a
lunchtime stroll. Perhaps you can do some physical exercise at
home as you start your day. My daughter pointed me to a phone
app, ‘The 7 Minutes Workout’, which I recommend to you. This is
a good all-round set of twelve exercises, especially when you do
two or three sets in a row. In any event, find safe and enjoyable
exercise that works for you and build this exercise pattern into your
daily schedule, if it is not there already. Make this a part of your
daily habit.
When you expend energy on exercise, you are going to get a
huge amount of energy back, especially if you implement healthy
eating and sleeping habits. You will have heard people say that the
more you give away without asking for anything in return, the more
you seem to receive. It is in giving that we receive. So it is with
exercise. Exercise is one of the gifts that keeps on giving.
In summary, build time into your schedule for exercise, so you
get more energy, and thus get more out of your life.

Physical Factor No. 4: Breaks

The fourth question in the physical factors stakes: Do you take
enough breaks? You are probably now saying, ‘Éamonn, what is
going on? We are talking about making the most of time and you
want me to take breaks?’
Well, ironically, you do need to take breaks during the workday
– in the morning, at lunchtime, and in the afternoon – to keep your
energy levels up. Sitting for too long is known to cause many health
problems and can really drain your energy. Get up from your desk
and walk about during the day. Have standing or walking meetings.
Spend a minute or two stretching at your desk. Some people enjoy

5
http://www.bmj.com/content/357/bmj.j1456

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 Manage Your Energy

and benefit from a short nap during the day.

You also need to take breaks away from work in the evening
and at the weekends. Ideally, every four to six weeks, you get away
for a day or two and do something completely different, a real
break. And you certainly need an annual vacation. Maybe you can
take a longer sabbatical break from work every few years.
Taking breaks throughout the day, the week, the month, and
the year will help you discharge and recharge, and give you more
energy. Breaks work!
Ask yourself – ‘do you take enough breaks?’ Does your typical
schedule facilitate real breaks, so that you can maximize your
energy and get the most out of your time?

Physical Factor No. 5: Hobbies

Fifth and final question in the physical factor energy stakes: Do you
have hobbies? I do not mean work related hobbies. I mean hobbies
that take you to a different physical and mental place. Maybe it is
music, comedy, tennis, golf, football, cinema, theatre, gardening,
community work or the beach. Can you go to a different physical
and mental place that really takes you away from your work?
Do these hobbies give you energy and life? If not, how are you
going to adjust your time usage, so that you find and then build in
space for these hobbies?

Physical Factors: Summary

How did you do in this audit? If you scored five out of five, then
you are in great shape and you can consider yourself exceptionally
lucky.
If, however, you are like most of us and have room for
improvement (the biggest room in the house, as they say) then I
suggest you take time out to decide how you will address any of the
physical factors you believe are important for better energy
management.
I am in no way trying to say that these five physical factors are
the only ones that affect your energy levels – so please do
extrapolate and use these questions to prompt further personal
reflection on any other physical factors that may be draining your
energy.

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Energy Audit: The Emotional Factors

The second part of the energy audit addresses five areas that affect
the emotional side of your energy, which in turn can have a real
effect on your personal energy levels.

Emotional Factor No. 1: Career and Work Choices

First question: Are you happy with the career and work choices
that you have made?
Some people say to me, ‘Éamonn, work is not that important.’ I
am afraid that I cannot agree. You work from pretty much nine am
to five or six pm each day, and many of us probably longer. You do
this from Monday to Friday and some of us work at weekends.
You do this for roughly forty-eight weeks of the year. Some people
sadly more. You do this from age eighteen, nineteen, or twenty-two
to age sixty or sixty-five. You are giving the best hours, the best
days, the best weeks, and the best years of your life to work. You
have no better time to give.
It is madness not to be happy at work. It is crazy not to enjoy
work. If this is the situation you are in, and many people are, then
you should do something about it. Change the work you are doing
in your current job or change jobs or career. This may take time –
but invest this time.
One of my brothers did just this and went back to college at age
nearly fifty. Don’t tell him I told you! A fabulous example to us all.
He accepted responsibility. He changed so that he will do
something very different for the next fifteen years or so. He is
definitely happier. What a way to go.
If, on the other hand, you are happy in your career and you are
happy with your work choices, what are you doing to invest in your

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career? What are you doing to make the most of it? If this is the
best time of your life, what are you doing to absolutely maximize
your happiness and your success at work? What is your career
investment plan, and how are you fitting this into your time
management approach? A searching question!
When you go to work, are you fulfilling a contract to get paid or
are you building a rewarding career or are you fulfilling a true
calling? Which is it – contract, career or calling – and which do you
want it to be?

Emotional Factor No. 2: Negative Emotions

Second question: Do you have a coping mechanism to deal with
strong negative emotions? For many people, strong negative
emotions are more regular than they desire given their personal
situation, their work situation, and sometimes their personality.
In some cases, these strong emotions are often necessary to
help us move to where we need to be. Sometimes these emotions
are signals that are trying to rock us to a different place. When we
hit a hot surface or put our finger on a cooker, we take our finger
up quickly. We know what to do. The sudden heat from the hot
surface is a signal to act. What is your equivalent with strong
negative emotions? Do you know what to do? What is your
approach to dealing with strong negative emotions? If we let these
emotions fester, they will sap all our energy and we will not be able
to deal with the real situation at hand.
There is a most beautiful poem called “The Guest House” by
Rumi that starts with these lines … “This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.” The poem goes on to talk about the
arrivals, “A joy, a depression, a meanness”. In the middle of the poem,
Rumi suggests we “treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.” The poem advises we “meet them at the door
laughing, and invite them in.” The poem concludes by saying we
should “Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide
from beyond.” A poem worth reading, enjoying and reflecting on.
We need to acknowledge the strong negative emotion and
recognize, ‘this is a signal, it is a message, I need to do something
about this’. We can then apply our energy to doing something
constructive about the situation, rather than staying too long in a
state of stress and anxiety. If we can do this and I know it is hard,
then we are on the right path.

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Some emotions can be so overpowering for us that any rational

thought process is unlikely. One way to deal with the immediate
effect of such strong negative emotions is to seek a positive
distraction. This can be music for some people. Others keep a list
of internet sites or online motivational talks to visit for inspiration
from time to time. I myself love music, a great mood changer, and
I also find a period of sustained calm breathing helpful.
In one of John Powell’s more famous books, ‘Why am I afraid
to tell you who I am?’, there is a wonderful quote that neatly
summarizes what I am trying to say here; “your emotions and how you
deal with them will probably make or break you in the adventure of life.” I am
not suggesting for a minute that these few sentences are the
complete answer, but let me give you the questions and you can
then go find the answers that are right for you.
The questions are … ‘Do you get strong negative emotions? Do
they hold you back? Do they take too much of your energy? If so,
do have you a coping mechanism? If not, can you develop ways to
deal with this?’ Not a trivial set of questions I know, but these are
very important questions in terms of your energy levels.

Emotional Factor No. 3: Gratitude and Reflection

Third question in the emotional stakes: ‘Do you take time out to
practice gratitude and reflection?’ This can be very simple. Some
people will achieve this with meditation and other people have
similar practices. Are you doing something like this?
Let me explain some more. Do you ever find from time-to-time
that you, as they say, smell the coffee and you love the smell? You
stop and smell the roses? Maybe a friend came through for you.
Perhaps you really notice the wonderful colors of nature. Maybe
you experience a glorious sunrise or sunset. You just happen to
look and you say, ‘Oh my God, isn’t life great?’. Whenever this
happens, you get great energy and you feel good. You get a rush.
You get peace.
If this is the case, why wouldn’t you take time out periodically
to recreate this feeling? Maybe invest five to ten minutes of every
day to practice reflection and gratitude and get this positive energy.

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What would this kind of practice look like? Here are three
simple steps:
- Firstly, you start this process by expressing gratitude for at
least one good thing in your day so far, and savor the good
feeling of this positive memory.
- Secondly, you then reflect on how the day has proceeded
so far, the good and the bad, by rummaging through the
day, hour-by-hour, or activity by activity since you got up.
As you remember each item, you might move on quickly or
you might reflect on some more carefully. Maybe you are
happy with how you managed each situation and maybe
not. Perhaps with the benefit of hindsight, you could have
handled some of the situations better.
- Thirdly, decide how you want the rest of the day to
proceed, mindful of what you are grateful for and what you
learned from looking back on today so far.

A daily process like this can give you bundles of energy. If you
think about it, if you are convinced that you should do some
physical exercise and you see the benefits, why wouldn’t you do

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some emotional or mind exercises? Why wouldn’t you give five or

ten minutes every day or every few days to such an Examen 6, to
such a reflection? With this kind of practice, you get the benefits of
more energy to make the most of the precious time you have.

Emotional Factor No. 4: Relationships

Fourth set of questions: ‘Do you spend enough time with family
and friends in nurturing relationships? Do you have a shoulder you
can cry on? Are you a shoulder your friends can cry on? Do you
have someone you can talk to? Do you have someone to share
your frustrations and joys with?’ Very important questions from
both an emotional and energy point of view.
As humans, there are things we do really need to talk out.
Often, we are thinking things in our head and when we say them
aloud to another person we have figured, ‘Oh that is not what it is
at all.’ This can sometimes happen as soon as the words come out
of our mouth! The very act of verbalizing our thoughts is often
instructive. Just having somebody to bounce stuff off can be very
helpful.
As you are thinking this through, consider the opposite
question: “Are there people in your life that sap your energy, who
make you feel down?” You need to be careful to avoid these
people if at all possible or, if this not possible, have a coping
mechanism. My grandfather used to say, ‘Show me your friends,
and I will tell you who you are”. This speaks to the affect our
relationships have on our character. I assume he might also agree
with the following: ‘Tell me how are your friends, and I will likely
know how you are”.
So, a question well worth considering: Do you spend enough
time in nurturing relationships with family and friends?

Emotional Factor No. 5: It is Not All about You!

Fifth and final factor in the emotional stakes is headlined: ‘It is not
all about you.’

6 This simple 3-step practice is an adaptation of the Examen as introduced by

Ignatius of Loyola in his landmark book, ‘The Spiritual Exercises’, from 1548.

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Consider the following: Are there times in your day, week,

month, and year when you give to others without counting the
cost? Where you look after folks that need your help? Are you
giving of yourself to others?
Perhaps right now is not a time in your life when you can do
this outside of work. Maybe you have young children or a sick
relative and every spare second needs to go into them as is
appropriate. This is your very generous giving to others. Don’t
worry if you cannot give much time to others outside of work.
Maybe there are folks at work you can help when they are not
expecting it. If you are helpful to others, you will typically get their
gratitude in return and most likely feel better as a result.
The fifth question in summary: Is there a piece of you that
privately and unselfishly gives to others and without ego?
Apart from the fact that this is the right thing to do, this will
typically help increase your energy levels.

Emotional Factors: Summary

How did you do with these five questions on the emotional side? If
you got the perfect score, you are the unique living saint. If you
scored poorly, then welcome to the club. You are a human like the
rest of us and you have nothing to worry about. However, you do
have items to work! These five emotional factors are not the only
ones that affect your energy levels – so please do extrapolate and
use these questions to prompt further personal reflection.

Early Mornings and the Habit of Positive Energy

You may well be wondering where to start with better management
of your personal energy. Much of this comes down to habit and
discipline. If you get into the habit of positive energy practices,
then you will have better energy. Not always easy, I know. One way
to make a start is to give the very first part of your day to the
practices that you select as helpful for your energy. In the Irish
language we have an old saying, “Tús maith, leath na hoibre” (a
good start is half the work).
I have selected five practices that I now know are helpful to
jumpstart my day in the right way and I get up at 5:15am to do just
this. These are: (i) an exercise for the spirit, (ii) learning something
new for fun and to exercise the brain muscle, (iii) a physical body

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workout, (iv) a sea swim and (v) an exercise for the mind. I call this
my “5 at 5:15”. I am doing it long enough that is now part of my
habit/routine. Exactly what I do in the early morning and exactly
when I do this is not so important and is provided here by way of
one example. Indeed, the specifics tend to change every few
months. What is important is that I want better energy and I give
the first and best part of my day to helping in this quest. I find this
really helpful. If you believe that the amount of energy you enjoy is
important to your wellbeing, why not consider making this the first
investment of your day, before the day runs away from you?

Summary of Manage Your Energy

This chapter started with a quote from Aristotle:
“The energy of the mind is the essence of life.”
What I am trying to do is help you unlock extra energy to make
the most use of your time and life. To help unlock this hidden
energy I have discussed:
- Five physical factors to help your energy levels
- Five emotional factors to improve your energy levels
- An early morning energy investment routine.

Exercise
Start: If you have conducted your own personal
energy audit, you will likely have identified a few
areas for improvement. Pick one or two
suggestions to get started.
Evolve: Return to this chapter periodically and work the other
energy factors you deem helpful.

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Sharpen Your Attitude to Life

Introduction
“Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right.”
– Henry Ford

I have loved and used this quote for years, but it may not have
originated from Henry Ford at all! The quote certainly epitomizes
the attitude of Ford, but I can find no verifiable reference or
citation. In researching for this handbook, I did see one similar
quote by Virgil in “The Aeneid” that reads “Possunt, quia posse
videntur (They can, because they think they can).” My Latin teacher would
be pleased! Let’s assume someone way wiser than you or I crafted
this “Henry Ford” saying, and let’s enjoy it, wherever it came from.

Motivation: Why Sharpen Your Attitude to Life?

Imagine that your next project is very challenging. You are
selecting a new team member to join your project. One person
exudes a very positive attitude and the next person has an average
enough attitude, as best you can tell. Whom would you select? All
other things being equal, this is an easy enough decision. Attitude
really matters. On a project or in life we do not know for sure what
is coming next. It is best if we ourselves and the people around us
have a healthy attitude so we are able to deal with and navigate the
natural ups and downs.

The Essence
On your project and in life, you have the cards you have for now.
Maybe you dealt the cards to yourself or maybe someone else dealt
them. What matters now is how you deal with the hand of cards
you have. In this regard, your attitude really matters. If you wish to
be a leader on a collaborative project – whether you are the project
manager or not – it is important that you exhibit a healthy attitude.
You want your attitude to be more of a growth mindset than a
fixed mindset. You need to recruit more of your brain to help this
shift.
Viktor Frankl in his famous and fabulous book, “Man’s Search

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for Meaning” (that I highly recommend), wrote from concentration

camp experiences (situations infinitely worse than we will ever
face): “what alone remains is ‘the last of human freedoms’ – the ability to
choose one’s attitude in a given set of circumstances.” Attitude is a choice.
A healthy attitude is not something that we easily attain. For
most of us mere mortals, attitude is something we have to grow,
nurture, and sharpen from time to time, which is very doable.

Exercise
Let me ask you four deep questions, the three Hs
and the potential question.
-Are you happy?
-Are you healthy?
-Are you helpful to others?
-Are you reaching your full potential, or on track to do so?

Making the Attitude Investment

If you answered Yes to the four questions above, you are very
fortunate and I suspect you are intentionally investing in yourself.
And if this is the case, then you are sadly in the minority. If you
answer No to some of these questions, let me ask you a final
question for now. Are you prepared to invest to turn some of these
No answers to Yes? If you answered Yes to this last question, then
this chapter has ideas for you.

Attitude and Habits

There are many practices in the other chapters of this handbook
that will help you transform some of the above No’s to Yes. If I
had to select one chapter in particular, it would be “Manage Your
Energy”. This last chapter could also have been labeled “Get
Happy and Healthy” and it discusses very helpful and practical
investments for you to consider, starting with five physical factors:
- Sleep well
- Eat healthily
- Take physical exercise
- Enjoy breaks

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- Find non-work hobbies.

The chapter continues with five emotional factors:
- Be happy with your career
- Manage negative emotions
- Practice gratitude and reflection
- Invest in healthy relationships
- Give of yourself to others.
The three later chapters on Time Management suggest many
useful practices including:
- Set and reset personal and professional goals
- Make the best use of your time with schedules and routines
- Have a coach / mentor to accompany you.
The next chapter, “Know Your Personality”, introduces two
models, The Enneagram and The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator®, to
help you understand your personality profile, strengths, traps and
management preferences. How you are wired and what you do
with that wiring definitely affects your attitude.

Take Your Own Drugs

Intuitively we know that many of the practices above can and do
help us become healthier and happier. But there is now research on
the brain to explain how. I was never much good at Biology at
school, but I am now fascinated by the recent advances in
understanding the physiology of the brain and its relationship to
psychology. The brain communicates with itself by sending out
chemical information - neurotransmitters - from one neuron to
another. The brain is like a chemist, naturally producing drugs. The
chemicals we hear most about are dopamine, serotonin,
endorphins, oxytocin and cortisol. Here follows a very simple
explanation from a non-scientist!
Dopamine: We are learning that low levels of the chemical
dopamine are associated with self-doubt, lack of motivation, and
low self-esteem. We also know that dopamine is associated with
pleasure and reward. Dopamine is released when we achieve a goal
we have set for ourselves. This helps us understand the “success
breeds success” phenomenon; we crave the excitement of a reward.
Therefore, it is good practice to set smaller, near term goals to

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increase the levels of dopamine flowing in the reward network of

the brain. It is also fascinating to note that with each surge of your
own drugs, the brain creates more receiving stations. This means
that the next success will have an even bigger effect. As they say,
success breeds success, and now we know why!
Serotonin: Research is also teaching us that high levels of the
chemical serotonin are associated with people who have meaning
and purpose in their lives. Serotonin is known as the ‘happy
molecule’ and is associated with a positive outlook on life. The
research also explains that practices such as gratitude release more
serotonin into the brain. Another reason to practice gratitude and
reflection as suggested in the previous chapter.
Endorphins: You have likely heard of endorphins and runners
high. These chemicals are released in response to pain and stress.
Endorphins, a naturally occurring chemical, trigger a physical
response similar to morphine. If you smile, laugh, and exercise
more, you will release your own endorphins.
Oxytocin: And then there is oxytocin, also known as the love
hormone. Oxytocin is released by giving and receiving more hugs
each day. On a similar vein, there is a wonderful longitudinal study
running out of Harvard in Boston on the subject of adult
development and what makes a good life. You will find a great talk
on TED (November 2015) by Robert Waldinger explaining this
study and the findings. The study shows that healthy relationships
are the largest influencing factor for a longer, healthier life span.
Cortisol: Not all naturally occurring chemicals are helpful in the
long term. For example, cortisol, the chemical the brain produces
when we are under stress, kills neurons. Cortisol is part of our
‘fight or flight’ reaction to threats and stress, and the associated loss
of feeling in control. The production of cortisol should stop when
the threat passes. Unfortunately, our busy, fast paced lives often
mean that the flow of cortisol is constant as we are frequently
stressed, which can lead to anxiety, depression, and other health
problems. But the good news is that research also tells us that we
can grow new neurons in the hippocampus part of the brain.
Serotonin and oxytocin also both reduce cortisol levels. Amazing
really.
In summary, there is a strong correlation between the chemicals
being released in your brain and the good habits you adopt, so the
fuzzier area of your psychology is greatly helped by your actual

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physiology.

Why Attitude?
So why do we need a separate chapter on attitude in this
handbook? We now know that attitude and good habits are
interlinked. Consider this cycle:
- Take on some of the good habits cited in this handbook and
your attitude will improve
- Invest in a more positive attitude and it will be easier to adopt
good habits
- Lather, rinse, repeat.

You may read the practices suggested in these chapters and like
them but still do nothing with them or at least do nothing
substantial. In some of these cases, a healthy attitude will be the key
needed to help you unlock and remove the blocks within. And very
often many of the blocks are within. My mother sent me a note
one day from a sports broadcaster quoting his mother: “The miles
are ahead of you, but the blocks are within.” And as we know, mothers
know best!

Nine Elements of Attitude

Let’s assume that you would like to adopt some or perhaps many
of the suggested practices in this handbook as routine habits. How
do you get to a place where you are naturally practicing these
habits? Attitude has a massive part to play. The next logical
question becomes, how do you sharpen your attitude over time?
Here follow nine elements of attitude for you to consider and
work.

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1. Find Your Motivation

It is typically hard to make a change of any significance without
some motivation. The bigger the change desired, the larger the
motivation required. Can you think of any reasons that you wish to
change your attitude? Find your motivation. Ask yourself, “what is
my why?”
A good place to start could be the answers to the four questions
in the exercise above. Maybe you want to be happier? Perhaps you
wish to be healthier? Or you would like to be more helpful to
others (e.g. family, friends, work colleagues, etc.)? Might it be you
believe that you are not yet reaching your full potential? As you
remember these answers, keep asking yourself ‘why’ until you get
to the root reason, the real why. What is it that you really want and
why is this? True motivation will typically help trigger an attitude
change. This motivation can be the foundation from which you
start to sharpen your attitude.

2. Have a Life Purpose

One of my sisters often says “that is the honors course!” when we talk
about something challenging. This harps back to a time when we
could elect to take some subjects at school at a ‘pass’ or ‘honors’
level. The ‘Life Purpose’ question is definitely the ‘honors course’!
If you dig deep enough and search long enough, you might well
find a life purpose. This requires a personal investment. Your
purpose may adjust or even change as you navigate life. It may
change as you and your circumstances change. If you can find and
be guided by a life purpose, for a few months or years at a time,
then your path through life will be typically be accompanied by a
healthier attitude.
I was in Dallas airport on a short stopover from Boston
heading to Mexico City for work when I spotted a book called
“The Power of Purpose” by Richard J. Leider. I bought the book,
read it and I worked it on that business trip. It asked me some great
questions; sometimes all you need is the space to answer questions
for yourself. To be honest, I had forgotten about the book until
writing this paragraph, as this was almost twenty years ago. I found
the book and I see my own purpose written in the book, which
interestingly enough has remained pretty much the same since. I
can still see myself sitting in the sun in the back of a house in

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Mexico City answering these questions. I well remember this

experience.
If you can answer the ‘Life Purpose’ question or begin to
answer it, then your attitude will get a lift for sure. If you cannot or
are not ready to, then have no fear, as this may come to you later.
But do go back to the last section on “Find Your Motivation”, as
this will be of help in sharpening a healthy attitude for you.

3. Can Do, Take Responsibility

I have a friend who once explained to me that being responsible
means being able to respond. The same friend does not remember
saying this, but it has stuck with me.
There was a saying among some of the older generation in
Ireland when I was growing up that suggested “what is for you, will
not pass you by”. The response from the younger generation was
more akin to “if it is to be, it is up to me”. I was very fortunate to be
close to both of my parents and to two of my grandparents (one
from each side of the family) and they were definitely in the latter
camp. I can still remember the tone of my grandmother’s voice as
she explained to me, at the age of five, “there is no such thing as you
can’t”. I found out since that she was right! I am still very grateful
for that lesson and memory. I have modified this lesson since into
my own version: “you can do anything you want to do in life, you just have
to want to do it”. This, of course, brings us back to the motivation
question from the last few paragraphs.
It is very important to be persistent, to persevere. There is such
a thin line between what is perceived as success and what is
perceived as failure. Never give up if your dream or goal is
important to you. Why should you? Perseverance pays. Push
yourself. Be ambitious. Take the long view. Reach for your
potential. You can.
I ask you to consider the following. You are responsible for
your own desired outcomes. You are able to respond. You do not
have to accept the status quo. You need to adopt a “can do”
attitude for a healthier, happier and more fulfilled life. You need to
take personal responsibility as a key part of your personal
leadership. You need to cut the excuses and just do it.

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4. Invest in Good Habits

The good news – you can sharpen your attitude. The realistic news
– your attitude may not change dramatically overnight. If you
successfully adopt some of the practices in this handbook as
relevant for you, you will build confidence and sharpen your
attitude. To sustain this level of sharpened attitude, you need to
keep up the practices. Consider this like any other investment you
make. You need to sow in order to reap. You need to make the
good habits habitual. Success will breed more success.
There are various studies on how many days or months it takes
to adopt a new practice and make it a habit. In reality there is no
one answer as it depends on many factors, e.g. how hard the
practice is for you, how motivated are you, etc. Think how long
you needed to learn how to walk or ride a bike or drive a car.
Mastery requires repetition. For the purpose of this section, let’s
propose the following investment rule of thumb:
- Easy habit: twenty days
- Difficult habit: thirty days
- Very difficult habit: sixty days
- Extremely difficult habit: ninety days.
I believe it is important to acknowledge that you need to invest
enough time to make a worthwhile habit stick. Of course, you will
fall off the wagon from time to time, but generally speaking, it will
not take as much time the second or third time around to adopt the
same habit. So don’t give up! Maybe consider this three-step
process to forming a new habit:
i. Set a specific goal
ii. Set aside a specific and suitable time each day to bake this
practice into your routine
iii. Set rewards along the way, to enjoy the fruits of your efforts.
A healthy attitude helps you take on difficult and new
challenges. A healthy attitude helps you deal with life. A healthy
attitude is built on the foundation of good habits. As we explained
above, this is an iterative investment process:
- Adopt the attitude that you will take on helpful practices as
habits
- Take on these new habits and your attitude will sharpen again
- Lather, rinse, repeat.

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A sharpened attitude does not come for free. You will need to
invest, and adopting good habits is a great investment to help
sharpen your attitude.

5. Think Positive Thoughts

We are learning from research that the brain naturally generates
more negative thoughts than positive thoughts – maybe by a factor
of four to one, depending on the person. As a result of these
learnings, psychologists are explaining that we need to generate
more positive thoughts to counteract naturally occurring negative
thoughts. The issue is further complicated by the fact that some of
these negative thoughts have a large impact, often more significant
than one single positive thought. Therefore, we need three, four or
even five times as many positive thoughts as negative thoughts to
put ourselves in a good place.
So what is happening in the brain? Physiology explains that the
neurons fire and then wire together – not always in a good way.
Our normal wiring or natural way of reacting is not always positive.
The good news is that we can rewire the neurons in our brain to
react in a healthier manner.
Think of it this way. We have an emotion that triggers a set of
thoughts, which lead to certain behaviors or responses. For
example, I am cycling to work and some reckless driver comes
quickly out of a side road and cuts across me (the situation). I
immediately get a fright and then really annoyed (the emotions). I
start to imagine what I will say to the driver when I catch him at
the next set of traffic lights (the thoughts) and I am further enraged
(more emotions). When I do eventually catch up, I shout at him
(the response). In the process, I lose lots of the natural calm and
energy that I desired from cycling to work. This is not an imagined
situation! It might be hard to avoid these situations (bad drivers)
and initial emotions (fright and anger), but I can rewire my
response with reflection and experience. This is a choice I have
once I realize it.
A little bit more on personal choice. Back in the early 1990s my
mother and aunt invited me to a lecture in the local university by a
Dr. William Glasser, who coined the phrase and practice of
“Reality Therapy” and wrote a book called “Choice Theory”. The
example he gave to explain Choice Theory was a patient who was

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going through a very difficult and stressful marriage breakup. The

patient explained that he was depressed. The doctor asked him
why. The patient explained that he was depressed because his wife
did not love him anymore. The story ended with the doctor
agreeing that based on the evidence presented, it was a fact that his
wife was leaving and did not love him anymore, but that the patient
was choosing to depress. The doctor explained that while the
patient could not likely change the fact that his wife was leaving, he
could choose how he reacted. It was a fascinating insight. The
doctor did not imply that the patient could flick a switch and cease
feeling depressed. What he did explain was that somewhere deep
down, the depression in this particular case and (and of course not
in all cases) was a choice, conscious or otherwise.
We humans have a tendency to over-judge other humans. And
we hang on to the negative thoughts associated with these
judgements for too long. It is helpful to remember that an action a
person carries out does not define that person. Remember it is
more honest to judge and dislike the action but not to judge and
dislike the person. It is also wise to remember that we humans are a
constant work in progress, and the person you meet today will
likely be different tomorrow or next week or next month or next
year, so do not be too hasty in passing judgement. This will help
you think more positive thoughts and therefore act more positively.
In many ways, we are our thoughts, but we do not have to be,
especially if these thoughts are negative or in any way limiting us. I
like the line from Deepak Chopra, “I am a field of infinite possibilities”.
Recent advances in physiology and psychology reveal that we have
more control than we knew, as we understand more of what we
think and feel. It is much easier to have a healthier attitude when
we know how. Understanding this will really help you manage your
emotional energy and your time.
We now know that the good habits and practices advocated in
this handbook (and in so many other books) release chemicals to
make us feel and move better. We also understand we need to
proactively counteract the onslaught of negative messages with
more positive thoughts. Finally, we recognize that we have more
control over reactions to our feelings than we previously realized,
and we can actually rewire the neurons in our brains in a positive
direction. We can improve our attitude by changing our thoughts in
these ways.

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If All Else Fails, Get Over Yourself

If the above does not work, let me leave this section with one
funny but hopefully insightful story. Not so long ago, I was at a
birthday party of a school friend, a fiftieth celebration no less. I
only give the age to explain how long it is since we were at school
together to give the story its proper context. One of the guys (an
extremely successful man in his chosen field) was moaning about
some of the teachers at school. In retrospect, I believe he was more
having fun than moaning, but his wife overheard. As my friend was
pouring forth, his wife interrupted and scolded him as follows: “you
need to get over yourself”. The room erupted in laughter to hear our
eminent professional carpeted by his wife in this manner. It was
sweet! However, the phrase has stuck with me ever since as we do
need to just get ourselves from time to time. How right she was!

6. Work the Worries

The prior section explains that we naturally have many, many
negative thoughts each day. I emphasize naturally as this is how the
brain is wired. Some of these thoughts are worries about what
might happen. These can be positive as they help us avoid the
unpleasant or unwanted. We need these worries and fears to cope
and survive. But we do not need to hold onto these worries for too
long. We do not want to be paralyzed by the worries. You often
heard the expression, “sick with worry”. I am sure there have been
times when you have been sick in the stomach with worry. Doctors
tell us that some illnesses are psychosomatic, meaning the physical
illness is caused by stresses, strains and emotional factors.
The real worries can often be messages that we have something
to work. At some stage we need to decide to ignore the worry and
let it go or to work the worry. So when you find yourself getting
worried, do not beat yourself up for being worried, and do not stay
in the worried state. It is a normal part of the human condition.
But do work the worry as soon as you can. You will generally feel
much better once you start to work the worry.
I believe that many of our worries are not that serious, once we
think them through. Try to get perspective on your worries. As
they say, try not to sweat the small stuff.
I originally called this section “Work Your Worries” but then
renamed it to “Work the Worries”. Working your own worries is,

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of course, critical for a healthier attitude. But this handbook is all

about leadership, so it is also important to help others on your
team or in your circle to work their worries. This is what a good
selfless leader will do. It can also help you personally if those close
to you are not so worried, as the general mood and attitude lifts.

7. Fall Upwards
A few years back, I read a book called “Falling Upward” by
Richard Rohr. I loved it. It clicked with me immediately. In fact, I
have the book marked with stickeys and every now and again, I go
back to it.
One of the main points of the book is that we need to fall to
grow. A very simple example is that if we fall off a bike when we
are learning to cycle, we will generally learn how to ride a bike
properly, confidently, and not too cautiously. The book explains
that each fall is a real opportunity to grow, if we can see it that way
and grab it.
At home, I would have grown up with the “silver lining in every
cloud” philosophy. In my early career, I learned that we should
“learn from our mistakes”. I am comfortable that both of these are still
true and useful. However, I am increasingly more comfortable with
the notion that we need to fall every now and again to grow. “No
pain, no gain” as the coach used to tell us on the football field. In
this case, the pain is associated with failing or what is perceived as
failure.
The “Falling Upward” book brings forward some other
interesting points. For example, we need to let ourselves off the
hook when we fall and forgive ourselves. In this way, we will be
more tolerant of the falls that others have and then we will be able
to help in their growth. We may need to forgive ourselves and
others earlier and more often and this “Falling Upward”
understanding and attitude helps.
Life will not always go as you plan. There will be many falls for
you. How will you look on these falls? Can you look on them as
opportunities to learn and evolve, even when those around you do
not have the same perspective? If you can do this, if you can fall
upwards in a crowd, then this is a wonderful investment in
sharpening your attitude and your future.

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8. Be Comfortable with Contradictions

Life can be confusing sometimes. Life can seem contradictory. Just
take a look at some of the suggested practices in this handbook:
- Be action oriented yet reflective
- Make the best use of your time but take lots of breaks
- Invest in yourself but be helpful to others
- Have a successful career but spend more time with your
friends and family
- Be successful but learn to fall
- Be intentional on a path but be open to new possibilities
- Be very respectful to people but do not let them off the hook
if they do not deliver on expectations.
Life is not black or white. It is the many shades of grey, made
up by black and white. I hasten to add that life is also very colorful!
The solutions to challenges are not always clear-cut but they are
understandable if you think them through. Understand and learn to
be comfortable with the contradictions. Make your decisions on
where to balance out the contradiction for you. With this level of
comfort, you will have a sharper attitude that will stand to you.

9. Be Ambitious for Your Life

Live your life to the full. Be ambitious for your life. Remember, as
life is short, it is better to be happy, healthy, and helpful to others,
so you can lead your life to the full. Make this an element of your
attitude to life. I love the attitude to life expressed in this quote:
"I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I
work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is
no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have
got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as
brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”
- George Bernard Shaw (1856 to 1950), Irish writer, dramatist and critic.
Live your life on purpose. Live intentionally. Be the best that
you can be. You can’t control everything and it is unwise to try. But
this is no excuse to drift. Decide what you want from life and what
you are prepared to give to fulfill these intentions. You do not have
to plan your whole life but do at least think through the next few
months and years. What you want from life will change as you

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journey through life so you need to be open to new possibilities

while remaining intentional in the meantime. If you make the
commitment to live intentionally, while remaining open to other
possibilities, you will have a sharper attitude to life.
In order to be open to other possibilities, you need to be aware.
You need to be present. This is a very important aspect of personal
leadership, being self-aware. The ideas and chapters in this section
of the book (e.g. reflection and gratitude practices) will definitely
help you on this path to greater self-awareness.

Learning and Other Elements of Attitude

Are there more than nine elements of a healthy attitude? Of course
there are. I had to restrict myself from writing a list with nineteen
elements. But these nine will get you well started. If you work on
some of these nine, you will definitely have a sharper attitude to
life. And hopefully these will trigger your curiosity to search for
more elements to provision you for your journey. It is important to
remember that we only know what we know! It is vital to feed your
brain with new information, ideas and thoughts. Seek inspiration
from outside as well as inside. Keep learning and you will be
sharpening your attitude to life.

Human Values
When we moved into our new house, a family friend gave us a
poem that I had not seen before, which is now framed on the wall
of our house. I have since learned that the poem titled, “Children
Learn What They Live”, was first published in 1954 by Dorothy Law
Nolte. You may well have seen the poem. It starts with the line, “If
children live with criticism, they learn to condemn”. If you have not yet
seen this poem, I recommend you search for it.
I have heard people say that the world would be a better place if
adults were more like children. It dawned on me that it would be
interesting to reflect on this poem as an adult, as a check on our
way of living and as a check against the attitudes and practices we
have. So here is the poem with the “children” replaced by “I”, and
with “live” replaced with “practice”. With sincere appreciation to
Dorothy Law Nolte.

If I practice criticism, I learn to condemn.

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If I practice hostility, I learn to fight.

If I practice fear, I learn to be apprehensive.
If I practice pity, I learn to feel sorry for myself.
If I practice ridicule, I learn to feel shy.
If I practice jealousy, I learn to feel envy.
If I practice shame, I learn to feel guilty.

If I practice encouragement, I learn confidence.

If I practice tolerance, I learn patience.
If I practice praise, I learn appreciation.
If I practice acceptance, I learn to love.
If I practice approval, I learn to like myself.
If I practice recognition, I learn it is good to have a goal.
If I practice sharing, I learn generosity.
If I practice honesty, I learn truthfulness.
If I practice fairness, I learn justice.
If I practice kindness and consideration, I learn respect.
If I practice security, I learn to have faith in myself and in
those about me.
If I practice friendliness, I learn the world is a nice place in
which to live.

Summary of Sharpen Your Attitude to Life

Attitude is everything. The ideas and practices above will help you
live life with a sharper attitude. Take responsibility to lead your
own life to a place that you are happy with life. Be self-led.
Remember, “You can do anything you want to do in life, you just have to
want to do it”.

Exercise
Where do you now stand on the idea that you can
sharpen your attitude, and that it will not sharpen by
accident?
Start: Select one or two of the “Nine Elements of
Attitude” to work for the next month, perhaps starting with “Find
your Motivation”.
Evolve: Schedule time to REP some of the other elements.

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Know Your Personality

Introduction
“I want freedom for the full expression of my personality.”
– Mahatma Gandhi

This chapter will help you understand how your personality

influences your Project Management style and approach, and what
to do about this! This chapter on personality is also intended to
help you in the rest of your professional and personal life.

Motivation: Why Focus on Your Personality?

You have a personality and there is no getting away from it! Who
you are and how you are naturally wired does affect how you lead
and manage. Your personality, therefore, influences your project
success rate, sometimes for good and sometimes not. At a very
minimum, personality influences your communication style. Your
team can definitely see your personality. Shouldn’t you also be able
to see your personality?!

The Essence
To fully see yourself in the physical form, you need to use a
number of mirrors, each placed at different angles: front, back,
side, above, below, etc. So it is with personality. You need different
models or mirrors to get to know the real you. However, one good
mirror will give you a great start – an incisive first view. You will be
amazed what you can see! Even though it is not the “full you”, it
will be helpful.
There are a number of different personality models or mirrors
you can readily get information on and learn about. I have
experience of two in detail, both of which I like, respect, find very
helpful and, most importantly, I trust. I will give a pretty good
introduction and explanation of the Enneagram and a very brief
introduction to the Myers Briggs Personality Indicator, or MBTI as
it is also called.

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Exercise
In your experience, how does or should personality
affect or shape the style of Collaborative Project
Management exercised?

Enneagram – A Number
Ennea is the Greek for nine and gramma is a sign. The Enneagram
charts nine personality types, as depicted here.

Enneagram – More than a Number

I can hear you say already: there are seven billion people in the
world and only nine personality types, no way! And if the nine
types were very rigid, then you would of course be right. It is
important to stress that which we all know: no two people in the
world are exactly the same, yet there are recurring patterns. In
Enneagram terms, you are a number (more often called a type), but
you are also far more than a number. Each Enneagram type has a
rich and deep description. You are typically travelling and living on
a spectrum of unhealthy to healthy with your type.

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Enneagram – Centers, Wings and Arrows

As you dig deeper into the Enneagram, you will discover that you
come from a center and have wings and arrows into other
Enneagram types. For example, I belong to the ‘Heart’ or feeling
center (two, three and four) and not the ‘Head’ or thinking center
(five, six and seven) and not the ‘Gut’ or instinctive center (eight,
nine, one). I am a three, influenced by a strong two wing and am
influenced to a lesser but real extent by a weak four wing. When I
am acting healthily, I tend to act out the more attractive aspects of
the six, but when I am very tired, I can move to the less redeeming
aspects of the nine. I would not expect you to understand what this
means just yet, but hopefully this gives you a sense of the richness
of the Enneagram.
In summary, as you research and learn more about the
Enneagram, you will discover, enjoy and benefit from a deeper
model than is evident on first glance with a single number. Stick
with it!

The Enneagram Decomposed

I will introduce and explain each of the nine types in the following
pages. I will speak in the first person, so you can try each of the
explanations on for size. I will outline each Enneagram personality
type in four short sections: profile, strengths, traps, and a

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management perspective.
In these sections, I talk about healthy and unhealthy behaviors.
When a person is acting from a healthy place, the strengths are
deployed. When a person is acting from a less healthy place, we are
falling into the traps typical of our personality type. It is not much
fun to read about and admit the traps. It can and, to an extent
should, be very humbling. It is, however, very fruitful to really
understand these traps that we tend to fall into so we can avoid
them or get out of them quicker. The truth about yourself can set
you free.

Type 1 – Perfectionist / Reformer

Profile
I do it the right way. I like to improve myself and everyone else to
make the world better, to make the world right, even if sometimes
others do not want this!

Strengths
I set very high standards. I am typically compliant with rules. I dot
all the “i”s and cross all the “t’’s. You can trust me to deliver on my
promise.

Traps
I am not that flexible. I can become anxious about stuff that is not
going right. I tend to be critical and resentful of others who do not
meet my standards. I definitely find that work can become life, and
relaxation is missed, unless I am very careful.

Management Perspective
I am a very diligent manager who strives for the highest quality
possible.

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Type 2 – Helper / Giver

Profile
I am motivated to help others. I love being needed and liked, even
if I do not admit this to others.

Strengths
I am very generous and caring. I am typically optimistic. I am very
attuned to the feelings of others. I build great relationships and I
enjoy this.

Traps
I am not very good at looking out for my own needs. I can get
angry and badly let down when I feel unappreciated and this will be
very evident to all as I wear my feelings on my sleeve. I can be too
accommodating and I find it hard to say “No.” I can be
manipulative if I am acting as the unhealthy me.

Management Perspective
I am the servant leader. I enjoy being in service of others.

Type 3 – Achiever / Motivator

Profile
I want to be successful and productive. I am not fond of failure.
For me, this is the “f” word!

Strengths
I am very goal driven. I am efficient and energetic. I am a
particularly hard worker and I am highly productive. I am a
pragmatic problem solver and get stuff done.

Traps
I am not tolerant or appreciative of others who are not achieving.
When I am unhealthy, I can act from a place of vanity and ego. I

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am not always not mindful of the feelings of others. I have no

“off” switch. I can act more like a “human doer” than a “human
being”.

Management Perspective
I have a relentless drive for project success to deliver or exceed the
goals.

Type 4 – Romantic / Individualist

Profile
I want to be connected to my feelings and be understood. I
definitely do not want to be ordinary.

Strengths
I am creative and artistic. I am very expressive. I can be inspiring
and supportive. I strive for excellence.

Traps
I can swing very high and very low, and can be moody and self-
absorbed or have high energy. I am not always great at taking
feedback. I can definitely be stubborn at times. I get bored easily
and want to move on to the next, more interesting project quickly.

Management Perspective
I strive to lead, so that we all experience real meaning and our true
purpose.

Type 5 – Observer / Investigator

Profile
I want to know and understand so I can be independent and, of
course, not look foolish.

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Strengths
I have an admirable thirst for knowledge. I am analytical and a
good problem solver. I am able to compartmentalize. I am
perceptive and systematic.

Traps
I can appear distant, as if I enjoy my own company. I can be
negative and when I am acting from an unhealthy place, please
don’t ask me to repeat myself! I can undervalue relationships. I am
not assertive enough.

Management Perspective
I and we need to research, think and know everything, and then we
will be more effective on the project.

Type 6 – Questioner / Loyalist

Profile
I enjoy security, so I tend to fear and prepare for the worst. I am
very loyal but do not cross me!

Strengths
I am very responsible and reliable. I am funny and fun to be with. I
am practical and a great team player. I am very collaborative, loyal
and dutiful to my team, to authority and to my company.

Traps
I can be paranoid and this is exhausting for me. I tend to be
controlling and rigid. I am often highly judgemental of others. I can
also be indecisive, overly analytical and risk averse.

Management Perspective
I like to make sure all the team feel involved, where we can
overcome all the obstacles that I see.

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Type 7 – Adventurer / Enthusiast

Profile
I like to be happy, do fun stuff and to do good. I am not much into
suffering though and I want to keep all my options open!

Strengths
I am fast. I am a quick thinker and I am great in a crisis. I have lots
of enthusiasm and exude optimism. I am very productive and I
naturally multi-task. I am courageous and not afraid to take risks.

Traps
I can be impulsive. I am not that disciplined. I may not finish what
I start. I can be very restless and I like to move on. I can be easily
distracted and I am not fond of routine. I am not always focused.

Management Perspective
Let me help the project find new and exciting stuff so we will take
advantage of this and we do not miss these opportunities.

Type 8 – Challenger / Boss

Profile
I like to be strong and I want to appear so, even if I am not. Please
fight back or I will not respect you.

Strengths
I am very confident. I have high energy. I am extremely direct. I am
very loyal to the cause, especially if it is a just cause.

Traps
I can be controlling. I like it to be my way or the highway. I am
often domineering and this can be intimidating for others around
me. I tend to be self-centred and sometimes aggressive.

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Management Perspective
I am a decisive, take-charge manager who likes strong people in the
key roles. Just follow me, have no worries, and we will be fine.

Type 9 – Peacemaker / Mediator

Profile
Generally, I like peace and harmony and I like to go with the flow.
I definitely avoid conflict.

Strengths
I am open minded, accepting, empathetic, and non-judgemental. I
am well able to relax and have a good time. I am extremely patient.
I am a great relationship builder.

Traps
I can be indecisive and not assertive enough. When unhealthy, I am
apathetic and then nothing happens. I can be forgetful. I am good
at procrastination – in fact, very good!

Management Perspective
If we all get on really well and are nice to each other, the project
will be delivered so much quicker.

Which Enneagram Type Are You?

What Enneagram type do you think you are? Only you can tell and
it is likely that you do not have enough detail in the preceding
pages to know. But hopefully you are intrigued!
You are very likely finding yourself in many of the types. To
help you a little bit on this quest, your type goes to the root cause
of why you do what you do. I might appear extremely helpful to
others and perhaps this is because I am a two (the helper/giver).
Or maybe it is because I am being paid to be helpful and I want to
be successful, so I am acting more of a three (the
achiever/motivator). I might spend hours cutting the trees in my

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front yard to a perfect height because I am a one (the

perfectionist/reformer). But perhaps I do this because today it
appeals to my artistic side (the romantic/individualist). The books
referenced towards the end of this chapter contain self-tests to
guide you on this quest for your type.
Words of warning: please do not assume you know what
Enneagram type someone else is and please do not judge someone
even if you do.

The Best Enneagram Type?

Is there a best Enneagram type? Absolutely not. The real value of
the Enneagram is to know yourself, to be more self-aware, and as a
result, act out of a healthier and happier place. As my daughter
reminds me from time to time, “Éamonn, we are here for a good time,
not a long time.” Life is very short and self-awareness is one of the
tools that will help you make the most of your life.

The Best Enneagram Type for Project Management?

Let us review the management perspectives from the nine types
and see if we identify the best type for the role of project manager.
1. I am a very diligent manager who strives for the highest
quality possible.
2. I am the servant leader. I enjoy being in service of others.
3. I have a relentless drive for project success to deliver or
exceed the goals.
4. I strive to lead, so that we all experience real meaning and
our true purpose.
5. I and we need to research, think and know everything and
then we will be more effective on the project.
6. I like to make sure the team all feel involved, where we can
overcome all the obstacles that I see.
7. Let me help the project find new and exciting stuff, so we
will take advantage of this and we do not miss out on these
opportunities.
8. I am a decisive, take-charge manager who likes strong
people in the key roles. Just follow me, have no worries
and we will be fine.
9. If we all get on really well and are nice to each other, the
project will be delivered so much quicker.

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Can you spot the perfect project manager? I am thinking not. I

assume you can see positive leadership and management qualities
in each of the nine types. In many ways, the ideal manager would
be able to deploy any of these fine qualities on a collaborative
project.
You will find that some types (e.g. one, two, three, and eight)
more often end up in management positions. However, when any
of these types are acting from the unhealthy place of their
personality type, the project will likely be challenged.
It is rare enough that personality type is checked before
appointment to project management, so you will find all nine types
in charge of projects and in management positions. The key is to
know your strengths and traps, and match them to the context of
the specific project, team, and situation. For example, as a type one
you strive for perfection. How much perfection is needed on this
project? As a type two, you will want to help everyone. Do you
have time to help everyone on this project? As a type six, you can
be indecisive. Is this hurting the project? And so on.

Enneagram – A Brief History

Some readers will wonder where this all came from and for you,
this is an extremely short history as I understand it (mostly
summarised from the book by Richard Rohr referenced in the next
section of this chapter).
Some Enneagram researchers have made links to Pythagoras,
the Greek mathematician and philosopher, from the 5th Century
BC. There are early references to eight forms of temptation in the
4th Century AD in Egypt. These were developed by the Desert
Fathers. Incidentally, the early Christian Church labeled this as
heresy.
Another development appears in the early 14th Century in Spain
when Ramón Lull, a lay or tertiary Franciscan, was drawn to
Sufism. At this point, we got a 9-point diagram of human
characteristics of vices and virtues.
Fast forward to the early 1900s when George Ivanovitch
Gudjieff, an Armenian spiritualist, did more work on the model,
describing features covering our true essence. And in the early
1960s, Oscar Ichazo, a Bolivian spiritual teacher, developed
personality descriptors. In the 1970s, Claudio Naranjo, a Chilean-

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born psychiatrist, adopted the Enneagram in California. Jesuits in

the US (including Fr. Robert Ochs SJ) worked on the model with
Naranjo, adopting the Enneagram for retreat work and spiritual
guidance.
As you can see, the model has a rich history over the centuries
and has been developed by people of many different faiths and
none. The Enneagram has crossed the divide in the US from the
spiritual to the business world and is now used by many
corporations around the world as a leadership development tool
focusing on that critical aspect of leadership, self-awareness.
I should add that I am no historian and the above is an
indication of the deep and varied roots of the Enneagram rather
than an exact history. If you are interested in the history of the
Enneagram, maybe you can use this as a starting point to search for
the more detailed story.
In 1985, I was going on a vacation to Berkley, CA and my uncle
was driving me to the airport. On that two-hour journey, he
introduced me to the Enneagram. I walked the streets of Berkley in
September 1985 and eventually found a store called “Shamballa”
where I bought my first book on the Enneagram. I was hooked!
Here was a model that knew me better than I knew myself. The
Enneagram is a mirror that I have returned to over the years and it
has always been a great teacher for me.

Enneagram Books
There are many sources of reliable information on the Enneagram.
I have bought, read, loaned, and lost many books over the years
but here is a list of some the Enneagram books currently on my
shelf.
- “The Enneagram Made Easy: Discover the 9 Types of
People”, by Renee Baron and Elizabeth Wagele
- “Discovering Your Personality Type: The Essential
Introduction to the Enneagram”, Revised and Expanded
by Don Richard Riso and Russ Hudson
- “What Type of Leader Are You? Using the Enneagram
System to Identify and Grow Your Leadership Strengths
and Achieve Maximum Success”, by Ginger Lapid-Bogda
- “Bringing Out the Best in Everyone You Coach: Use the
Enneagram System for Exceptional Results”, by Ginger

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Lapid-Bogda
- “The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective”, by Richard
Rohr.
I am happy to recommend all of the above, but if you are new
to the Enneagram, I would start with the first one on the list. It is a
fun, easy introduction, and the one I give to my family, co-workers
and friends as a starter.

The Myers Briggs Personality Types

I have explained above that the Enneagram is a very helpful mirror,
one of many such mirrors. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
(MBTI) is another such instrument that I find extremely insightful
and helpful. The MBTI was developed by mother and daughter,
Katharine Briggs and Isabel Myers, in the 1940s and 50s, extending
Carl Jung’s theory of psychological type from the 1920s.
Jung gave us Extrovert or Introvert, Sensing or iNtuition and
Thinking or Feeling (see below for a brief explanation of these).
The Myers Briggs extends Jung’s work by developing the MBTI
instrument to help us see patterns in how we prefer to use our
perception and judgement. Perception is how we come to
knowledge, whereas judgement is how we come to conclusions.
Since we all differ in how we perceive and judge, then we differ in
how we relate to the world around us. The MBTI mirror or
instrument views through four lenses as follows.
Extrovert or Introvert
-Do you relate more to the external or internal world?

Sensing or iNtuition
-How do you prefer to take in or perceive information?

Thinking or Feeling
-How do you prefer to make conclusions and decisions?

Judging or Perceiving
-Do you seek organization and closure or are you open
and spontaneous?

With two possibilities for each of the four preferences, this

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gives us sixteen MBTI types. For example, an INTP person prefers

Introversion, iNtuition, Thinking and Perceiving. The MBTI
theory believes that we are born with a natural pre-disposition to
four of the eight traits. We develop these preferred traits in early
life and this gives us a particular personality. In later life and with
knowledge, we can also develop the weaker traits to be more
balanced as needed. For example, an extrovert like myself will
deliberately seek more alone, reflective time to develop and
leverage my weaker introverted side.
As with the Enneagram, there is no right or wrong MBTI type,
there is no better or worse type. There is, however, knowledge and
understanding. Reliable and trustworthy instruments like Myers
Briggs can help you understand the terrain with a good map so you
can navigate work and life more successfully. I, for, example am an
ENTJ and this helps me know my preferences and when to deploy
them and when not.
Again, the same uncle who introduced me to the Enneagram in
1985 introduced me to Myers Briggs. I am forever grateful to him
for this and much more.
As with the friendly warning issued above with the Enneagram,
please do not assume you know what MBTI type someone else is
and please do not judge someone even if you do. I feel confident to
share my MBTI and Enneagram type, because even if others judge
me armed with this information, they still cannot really know
where each of my actions is coming from. Heck, sometimes I do
not even know myself! I do meet people who have insights into
these models and they do judge and label people, and this is very
regrettable.
I am very conscious that I have given far less detail with Myers
Briggs than I did with the Enneagram, and maybe in a later edition
of this handbook I will redress this, but in the interim you can find
more information on this wonderful model on the website of the
Myers & Briggs Foundation http://www.myersbriggs.org/

Summary of Know your Personality

To be an effective leader of others, you need to first know yourself
and be self-aware. To be self-aware you will benefit from strong
mirrors like the Enneagram and the Myers Briggs. I hope you make
space in your schedule from time to time, to learn and benefit from

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such models.
Let me conclude this chapter with a very insightful quote from
Isabel Briggs Myers: "When people differ, a knowledge of type lessens
friction and eases strain. In addition, it reveals the value of differences. No one
has to be good at everything."

Exercise
Where do you now stand on the link between
Personality types and successful Collaborative
Project Management and leadership?
Start: Do some research and select a personality
model to work with (or just start with the Enneagram). Get to
know yourself more deeply and make decisions on what to make
more use of (e.g. your strengths) and where to make adjustments
(e.g. your traps).
Evolve: Rinse, lather, and repeat with the first model you selected!
Later explore and move to a new model (e.g. MBTI). When you are
ready, bring these models to your team.

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 Manage Your Time – A 5 Step Approach

Manage Your Time – A 5 Step Approach

Introduction
Time is a finite resource that we all wish we could top up every
now and then! Juggling multiple, and sometimes competing,
professional and personal commitments makes effective time
management seem almost impossible. However, it is important to
take control and manage your time, so that you live your life with
intention.

Motivation: Why Manage Your Time?

When I think of effective time management, I am reminded of the
last two lines of Mary Oliver’s wonderful poem, “The Summer
Day”:
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild
and precious life?”
Two thoughts about this quote:
- It sums up a key motivation for this time management
chapter really well
- When you get some quiet time you might reflect personally
on this profound question.

The Essence
This chapter advocates a 5-step
approach to time management as
follows:
- Step 1: Set your goals both personal
and professional.
- Step 2: Create a generic schedule for
how you want the typical week to
progress.
- Step 3: Take time out every week to
plan the week ahead of you so the
work happens on purpose and not
by accident.

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- Step 4: Work your week as you planned and make use of the 3
Ds (Decide-Delegate-Defer) when handling and managing the
inevitable distractions.
- Step 5: Take time out to do a periodic review a few times a year
to reflect, recalibrate and reset.

Exercise
As we start into this chapter here are a few questions
for you:
- How effective is your time management?
- What’s good about it?
- What’s not so good?
- What do you think is missing?

Step 1: Set Goals and Action Plans

Use Step 1 to set your goals and draw up any action plans needed.
We are going to divide this first step into two simple sub-steps, as
simple as A and B!
- Step 1A: Devise your personal and professional goals and
commit them to paper
- Step 1B: Devise any necessary action plans.

Step 1A: Devise Your Goals

Step 1A in this simple approach is to devise your goals. Now I
know that this is easier said than done, so you are going to need to
take some time to do this. If you do not devise your goals right
now, you can do so on another pass through this handbook. The
goals can be personal, professional, work related, anything you
desire. The goals can be near, medium or long term. It does not
matter as long as the goals are important to you.
What would you say are the goals for the life you are currently
leading? And more importantly - what are the goals for the life you
wish to lead? Big questions!
The question then becomes – how do you achieve these goals?
The first suggestion is to verbalize your goals. In other words,
share your goals, or some of them, with somebody, and go public
to some degree with them. If you do this, I find that you are also

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more likely to achieve whatever goals it is you want to achieve.

Maybe it is an ego thing! If the people you tell care for you, they
will ask every now and again how these goals are progressing. They
hold you accountable without really knowing it!
I have found also that it is important to write down my goals.
The very act of first dreaming about and thinking out my goals and
then committing them to paper has always helped me increase the
likelihood of attaining my goals.
The ideal output of Step 1 is a written goal sheet. This sheet will
have goals that are important to you, and these will be completely
different to those of your friend, your neighbor, your brother, your
sister. These are your goals. Of course the goals will evolve so do
not be in any way nervous about your initial decisions and
remember that it is important to start somewhere.
On the image below you will see a suggested list of categories,
but if they are not all helpful, ignore them. This example should
give you a sense of the variety of goals that you may have on your
sheet.

I started doing this formally back in 1990 on a file-o-fax, where

there was a section in the back for goals. I am still doing it today
and I believe that I will be doing it for a long time to come! Today
I have four main life goals – a mixture of personal and

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professional. I now use Microsoft OneNote to capture my goals

and the changes to them.
In the below extract from my personal OneNote folder
(showing the dates of the main revisions), you see my recent goal
sheets starting in 2005. In 2014, I made three revisions to my goal
sheet, and there are two reasons for this. Firstly, there was an
amazing amount of stuff happening, all good with a lot of new
opportunity, so my goals needed revision. Second, formally putting
the first version of these Time Management materials together
required me to really think through my goals some more! I
sharpened my own personal approach to goal management because
of this sharing. A happy accident.

In summary, Step 1A – have a goal sheet. Write your goals

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down in a place where you can easily access them so you can live
by them and as time goes on, revise them. This is arguably the
most important and maybe the least implemented step in time
management – actually deciding how you want to spend your time.
If you have the time right now, I suggest you devise and write
down your goals.

A Perspective on Goals
Bill, a very good friend and mentor of mine, read the first edition
of the handbook and gave the following feedback that I thought
was well worth including.
“Long (or even medium) term goals have never been much of a factor in my
own success. Three things that I now regularly share as planning and mentoring
advice are:
- First, work very hard to accomplish something significant and important
to you every month, and thus be able to describe at least ten meaningful
things you achieved at the end of the year. Failing two months out of twelve
is no big deal.
- Second, always remember the Pareto principle, sometimes referred to as the
80-20 rule. In every situation, there are really only a few factors or items
that really matter and those are what you need to identify and spend your
time on.
- And third, what separates the really high achievers from the pack is deep
personal drive and responsibility – forcing yourself to go the extra mile even
when you may be worn out, stressed, angry, etc.
Lastly, in my own experience, the single most important factor influencing
project success is project size. Most organizations err in making the project too
big and tackling too much at once; addressing this challenge is something you
may want to focus on. The key is to pick a couple of important items (the
Pareto principle at work again) and then break them down into pieces so you
can get something meaningful done in a duration of just a month or two.”

Step 1B: Devise Action Plans

There are three ways to think about your goals. Some goals are so
simple that it is obvious what you have to do once you write them
down, and in these cases the goals do not require an action plan.
Some goals are more involved but if they are part of a business
plan or a project plan, this action planning is already done!

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The middle ground is where you have goals that you have set
which do require an action plan. With this plan, you know what is
to happen and when it has to happen. The path to the success of
your goal is more certain.
It is therefore advisable that in the same place as you have
written your goals, you write any necessary action plans that do not
exist elsewhere.

Step 2: Create a Generic Schedule for Your Working

Week
Step 2 suggests you create a generic schedule for your typical
working week. Staying with the approach in Step 1, this step has
two elements:
- Step 2A: Create a Generic Schedule
- Step 2B: Create a Plan Week Approach

Step 2A: Create a Generic Schedule

Step 2A suggests that you create a generic or typical schedule for
your working week. All of this generic schedule will not apply to
every week, e.g. during a vacation week you will want to do
something radically different. You also know if you are on a
training course or attending a conference or out for company
meetings that only some of this generic schedule will apply.
For the typical week, what is your generic schedule? You start
creating your generic schedule by going back to look at your goals
(devised in Step 1). As you look at all your goals, you realize that
they cannot happen by accident. You have to allocate time to
achieve these goals.
What you want to do is block out specific times for the
achievement of specific goals. Perhaps use different colors for the
different goal/time blocks. In my case, green time on my calendar
represents personal goal time; red represents time slots for
Customer Success goals, and so on. Think back to when you were
in school and you had a timetable set for you! Here you are
developing the equivalent for your more mature life. I use
Microsoft Outlook to create recurring blocks similar to the way you
might have a recurring appointment in your calendar for a regular
team meeting.

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Look at the entire week from when you wake until you sleep,
and decide how much you want to allocate to the achievement of
your goals, mindful of the fact that you are never going to be able
to stick to this exactly, so do not worry about getting it wrong. I
will come back to this later.
If relaxation, downtime, and having fun was a goal then you will
naturally allocate time to these critical activities as part of this step,
but if these are not formal goals, leave white space for same.
Of course, in a work and project management context, you are
going to have project meetings and group meetings so you also
need to overlay your work and project commitments on to this
generic calendar.
By using this approach, you are saying, “I live my life one week
at a time, one day at a time, and one time block at a time”. You are
devising how you are going to use the typical week to achieve your
specific goals and live the life that you desire, the life you deserve.

Example: Microsoft Outlook

Here is an example of a schedule derived from my own calendar.
There are some personal goal-times and some work goals here with
specific times set aside for items like e-mail and to-do lists, all of
which are important but you do not want them to take over your
schedule. We talk about this in the next chapter on “Manage Your
Time – Traps and Tips”.
You can see that certain goals translate into certain spaces on
the calendar. Then you can also see white space. As you start a
week with white space, identify which goals slot into this available
time.
You can also see that I have time set aside every week to REP –
actually the very first part of my week. As it happens I love my job
and am happy at about going to work each week, but knowing that
my first session on a Monday morning is REP (where I invest in
my professional development) makes it even easier. This sample
only shows Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. If you could see
Sunday, you would see an early morning time slot where I have
time set aside to REP my personal development.
Your personal and professional development is important on so
many fronts, but it will not happen by accident. Set regular time
aside each week and make it happen. Do not short change yourself.

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In all of this, you are trying to map your key goals to the
available time whilst also trying to create routine. You are certainly
not trying to be boring. However, there is a sense with routine that
is empowering, that is enabling, that makes it easier for you to just
focus on what you are meant to do at that point in time and
produce higher quality work you are more satisfied with it. A
schedule like this can really help you live in the moment and enjoy
the present, while knowing that your future is planned.

Step 2B: Create a Plan Week approach

In Step 2A, we suggested creating a generic schedule for your
typical week. In Step 2B, we recommend you devise a simple
process to actually plan your week.
Now why would you do something like this?! Well, if you think
about it, a week is an amazing amount of time. Each week is a new
gift. There is a huge amount of time in a week if you just approach
it the right way.

Example: Plan Week Approach

Here, you can see a simple process that will give you some sense of
what you might do in the time slot called, ‘Plan Week.’ This

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example is my current personal approach and it has five simple

steps as depicted in the image:

In the first step, I look at my personal and professional goals to

see which of my goals need progress this week and where can I fit
them in. Sometimes the time is already allocated on my generic
schedule, so it is a case of re-affirming my commitment to this slot
and often deciding exactly what I will do with this time. Other
times, I will need to use the available white space to allocate to
these goals. Looking at these goals once a week like this, I now re-
assess how I am doing and I commit to doing the same or better
this coming week. We need to be happy with our personal goal
achievement and this weekly check is important.
Second of my steps is to look at any pre-ordained meetings in
the coming week. Typically, I will have many meetings in an
average week and I have a passionate dislike for meetings that are a
waste of time, as I am sure you do too. This means I have to
prepare for these meetings. I look at the scheduled meetings and
decide if I need to do prep. If so I will allocate the preparation
time, usually just before the meeting if I can. If it is not possible to
prepare properly, I will try to reschedule the meeting to save
wasting everybody else’s time and mine.
Third step is I, like you, am involved in many projects. I will
look at these specific plans and see what items need to happen this
week to keep that business or these projects on track. Typically, I
will allocate these items to whatever white space I can find.
At certain times of the year, I will have a fourth step in my
weekly schedule planning. This will entail setting time aside to work

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on business planning or business reviews.

My fifth, and final, step in the typical week is to look at my to-
do list, my task list, my overflow. You will see in the approach we
are going to recommend in a later chapter that you do not action
every item when it comes up; instead, you will put some of these
items on a to-do list. However, these to-do’s do not get done by
accident! In this fifth step, I look at my tasks list, which are
important, but typically not as important as the other goals and
projects in Steps 1, 2, 3 of this template. I will allocate time to the
tasks that need to get done this week.
The steps described above are my generic planning process for
the specific week that I have in front of me.

Step 3: Develop the Specific Schedule (for this week)

In Step 3, develop a specific schedule for the week you now have
in front of you. If you think of the prior steps 1 and 2, they can be
summarized as follows:
- Step 1 is devise your goals (and you do this every now
and again – not every day!).
- Step 2 is develop the templates for how you are going to
organize your time.
Step 3 advocates that each week you take time to have that
meeting with yourself to decide how you are going to spend this
coming week.
When do you do this? I will typically do this on Monday just
before lunch. I used to do this planning on Monday morning very
first thing but not anymore. I have found it is best to do the most
difficult and important work first thing in the morning instead of
emails or time planning like this Step 3.
Sometimes I get overwhelmed with too much work – most
often when I forget to say “No” to new opportunities! Maybe you
also find that sometimes there is too much going on and you
wonder how you are going to get through everything.
Being overwhelmed can come because you have too much on
your plate. We need to remember there are only so many hours in
the day and only so many days in the week. By planning your week,
you are saying, ‘This is what I am going to get done and this will
have to wait’ and, ‘I know when I am going to defer this to’. This
approach can relax you so you can enjoy the rest of your day, week

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or weekend.
In these times of overwhelm, on a Friday before I leave work or
sometimes over the weekend, I will sneak away for an hour or less
to plan the week ahead to figure the best way through and thereby
clear my head.
The key in Step 3 is that you have a pre-set allocated time for
plan-your-week activity. In fact, if you looked closely at the image
above and partially repeated here, you will see that this Microsoft
Outlook calendar entry for me that started in 2002.

Back in 2002, I started using Microsoft Outlook to schedule this

meeting with myself to plan how I am going to get the most out of
my week. This is a practice that has worked well for my
BrightWork colleagues and me and I am happy to recommend it to
you.
When planning your week, I would also suggest that you are
very realistic. Do not think you can get ten things done if you are
only going to get five done. This judgement will come with practice
but be realistic from the outset. Also, set enough time aside so
whatever you are doing, you can do well and to a standard that you
and your colleagues are happy with.
Finally, as you plan your specific weeks, bear in mind that the
schedule will not work out exactly as you had planned – it will
change – so assume changes. Your schedule will be more realistic,
even relaxing, and you will be more successful and happier.

Step 4: Work the Schedule/Plan

Step 4 is where we work the plan. In the first 3 steps of this
approach you have put time into defining your goals, your generic
schedule and your specific schedule, so whatever you are doing
right now is what you have decided you want to do. You should be
able to relax and enjoy doing it, because you know you are going to
get to the other tasks. Ironically, some people think that a schedule
is restrictive but planning your week like this is liberating and
should actually help you live in the moment and be present in the

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now.
The question you are probably asking is what about changes?
What about distractions? What about interruptions? It is all very
well to live in the moment and be relaxed but when I get distracted,
when somebody walks up with something different, when I get
interrupted, when the plan does not go the way I want, what do I
do?
Distraction is a reality and many times, can be a real gift, so we
need mechanisms and space to deal with this reality. My mother
reminds me that “life is something that happens when you are planning
something else!”
The next chapter in this handbook is “Manage Your Time –
Traps and Tips”. In this chapter, I talk through 18 traps that suck
away at your time and 18 tips to deal with them.
In the next section of the current chapter, I will give you one
helpful technique to get you started.

Managing Distractions
Managing distractions – yikes! I have observed that the people who
are very easily distracted and often interrupted are people who do
not set goals and do not have their schedules organized. They are
not living their life in a purposeful way. That may be a bit harsh
and does not take into account some roles that are, by their very
nature, prone to interruption, but you can observe yourself and see
if this aligns with your experiences. The best defense against being
randomized by others is to get organized using some approach.
As promised, let me give you one technique to get you started.
When a distraction comes that is trying to take you away from what
you should be doing right now on your schedule, remember these 3
Ds – “Decide-Delegate-Defer”.

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Decide
The first D is make a decision. This should be the first priority.
When a distraction arises, you decide if you want to take this
distraction or not.
If you decide you want to take it, consider: do I have to do it
now, or can I do it later? If you decide to do it now, whatever you
are doing will need to be rescheduled. The first order of march is
to make a decision. You need to be the person who decides how to
spend your time – not someone else.
Now I meet many people, sometimes very busy and
accomplished people, and they get overwhelmed. As I mentioned
earlier I get overwhelmed from time to time. It happens to all of
us. In fact, in some ways this is a good sign because you are taking
on lots of stuff, but we need mechanisms to cope with overwhelm
and this is one simple process to deal with it.

Delegate
If you decide to take on the extra work that just arrived, the second
D is to ask yourself can or should I delegate it? Now I do not
mean dump it on somebody else. That is unfair.
Some people are very good at shifting work to other people
who have already too much on their plate. You will also find some
personality types cannot say “No” to the extra work, so be careful
not to overload these good people.
Be a responsible delegator. Find somebody who can help you
out with the extra work and delegate responsibly. Make sure these
people are able to do the work and ensure they have the necessary

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support from you. Think before you delegate.

Defer
The third D is defer. If it is important that you get the extra item
done, maybe it does not have to be done right now? If it is
important but not urgent, can you defer to another time?
Allocate this extra item to a specific time slot on your calendar
or add the item to a to-do/task list. In the meantime, you can get
back to whatever you should be doing right now, finish that out,
and enjoy doing your current work.
In summary to help with distractions, remember the 3 Ds –
Decide, Delegate, Defer. Of course, as you traverse the 3 Ds at any
stage you may indeed decide to Do the action (the 4th D!).

Step 5: Periodic Review

If you look back at the process and approach we have worked so
far, steps 3 and 4 involve a natural amount of continuous review.
These reviews, while important, can tend to be more microscopic
rather than macroscopic, if you get my drift.
Every now and again it is important to get back to Steps 1 and 2
and ask yourself some hard questions, e.g.,
- The 3H (happy, healthy, helpful) questions:
- Am I happy?
- Am I healthy?
- Am I helpful to others?
- The life potential questions:
- Am I successful with my goals? (whatever success means
to you personally)
- Am I living to my full potential?
- Am I the best that I can be for myself and people who
are important to me?
Step 5 is about setting time aside to review how you are doing
against your personal and professional goals. It is honestly
acknowledging that you are not going to give yourself an A+ grade
on your goal and time management the first time around. It is just
not going to happen! And life changes anyway, so periodically there
are going to be natural adjustments that need to take place.
If you think about it, it takes time to learn how to ride a bike, to

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swim, to horse-ride, to play golf, to become a marketer, an

engineer, etc. Whatever it is that you are good at, it has taken time.
Recent wisdom tells us that it can take ten thousand hours of
practice to achieve personal mastery in some areas, so you better
get started soon with time management!
Therefore, with Step 5 you take some time out and relook at the
goals identified in Step 1. Assess your energy levels. Examine how
you allocated your generic week in Step 2 and decide if you want to
make some adjustments.
I aim to do this at least once a year but sometimes I review
more than this. This review typically happens around significant
dates such as the start of the year or when I get back from summer
vacation. Whenever it triggers for you, go with that process and
make the adjustments.
There is another point to make here. What we are really saying
to you is be intentional, decide the life you want to lead and do not
drift for too much or for too long. While you will want to be
spontaneous, we are also suggesting that you have personal and
professional goals to guide and live the life that you want.
Now, this readjustment should not be stressful. This periodic
review should actually be enjoyable because it is like a reboot, a
restart, and a chance to go again.
Remember that ‘practice makes perfect’ in all endeavors. It will
take time to be good at time management, so how do you expect to
get it perfect on your first attempt? You can’t. You shouldn’t. This
periodic review is your chance to improve your time management,
and you need to take advantage of and enjoy this reflection.

Summary of Time Management - a 5 Step Approach

This chapter started with the last two lines of a Mary Oliver poem:
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild
and precious life?”
Food for thought! A big question really worth answering for
yourself, if you did not do so as we started this chapter.

In summary, this chapter recommends the following five steps:

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- Step 1: Set your goals both

personal and professional.
- Step 2: Create a generic schedule
for how you want the typical week
to progress.
- Step 3: Take time out every week
to plan the week ahead of you, so
it happens on purpose and not by
accident.
- Step 4: Work your week as you
planned and remember the 3 Ds
(Decide-Delegate-Defer) when
handling and managing the
inevitable distractions.
- Step 5: Take time out to do a periodic review once or twice a
year to reflect, recalibrate and reset. And be sure to enjoy this
step.

Exercise
Start: Spend some time working on your goals in
the next few weeks.
Evolve: Start working through some of the other
suggestions in this approach to help reach your
goals and make better use of your time.

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Manage Your Time – 18 Traps and Tips

Introduction
There is a wonderful quote from Benjamin Franklin:
“Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is
the stuff that life is made of.”
Feel free to set down this handbook for a few minutes to think
about this quote and what it means for you, because in many ways
it sums up the motivation for this chapter.

Motivation: Why 18 Traps and Tips?

Welcome back if you enjoyed a time-out! This chapter will walk
you through traps and tips in these three areas:
- Your goals
- Your schedule
- The inevitable distractions.
In each of these three areas, I will call out the traps you might
fall into and I will suggest tips to avoid these obstacles. Eighteen
traps and tips in all.

The Essence
The main message of this chapter is as follows: if you knew that the
road you were driving was full of holes, you would avoid the holes!
It is wise to know where the time management traps are and avoid
them!

Exercise
As we start this chapter, I suggest you reflect on
the traps and distractions that currently trip you
up, that make you feel, ‘Ugh, I did not get as
much done today as I should have done.’ What
are these traps? Having written your thoughts, I suggest another
question. “How do you think you could avoid these traps? How
could you make them less distracting, less distressing?”

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Goals: 5 Traps and Tips

We are going to start with Goals – no surprises there. Those who
read the last chapter (Manage Your Time – a 5 Step Approach) will
know that I have a strong bias for being very clear on your
personal and professional goals.
What I often find is that people who become disappointed or
overwhelmed are typically not achieving their goals, stated or
unstated, personal or professional. This may not come to the fore.
It may not be what people are thinking consciously, but deeper
down this is what is often being felt.
This particular section is going to walk you through five traps
and tips to make sure you are on track to achieve your goals
because I believe that this will really set you up for success and
happiness.

Goals Trap No. 1: Not Achieving Your Goals

Trap: Do you feel as though you are wasting time and not
achieving your goals? This can be very frustrating.

Tip: Have you a written set of goals? If not, consider writing your
goals in simple, clear, unambiguous, and achievable terms. If you
do have written goals, then go back to them. Relook at them and
re-evaluate them. Maybe they are the wrong goals. Or maybe you
just need to refocus on them. (Refer to Step 1 in the “Manage Your
Time – a 5 Step Approach” chapter if you need more guidance.)

Goals Trap No. 2: Unclear Path to Success

Trap: Are some of your goals a bit fuzzy? Perhaps you have a very
clear goal but you are not quite sure how to achieve it? You know
what you want, you know the desired end-state, but you are not yet

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on a clear path to success. This can also be a huge waste of time

and quite frustrating.

Tip: Go back and create a clear, concise set of actions that are
time-based detailing how you will achieve each important goal. Do
this, and make it no more than a page in length if you can to begin
with. Take your time and do this well.

Goals Trap No. 3: Not Getting to Your Goals

Trap: Do you feel as though you have some very important goals
but you are not getting to them? This trap is common, because less
important stuff gets in the way.

Tip: Come in every morning of each workday and give the first two
hours to your most important goal. Now if you do not think that is
a good idea, try it for a week or ideally for a month. Two hours of
every day.
When you come in to work, do not even turn on your computer
and if you have to, then do not look at your email. Two hours
every day to achieve your most important goal; you will make
amazing progress in a few weeks and months. You will be well on
the road. I “cheat” a small bit on this one in that I do critical email
and sometimes small time-sensitive tasks from home before I get
to work – so that when I arrive at the office my two hours start
clean.

Goals Trap No. 4: Feeling Overwhelmed

Trap: Do you feel overwhelmed? This might be a reward for your
success because you are taking on too much, and if so,
congratulations!

Tip: It is natural and normal to be overwhelmed from time to time.

If you are very overwhelmed, then you may need to schedule some
down time. Just get away from it, relax, recharge, and come back
refreshed. With this new energy, you can then re-organize and
regain control.

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Goals Trap No. 5: Stressed

Trap: Are you stressed?

Tip: We all get stressed from time to time. It is one of the most
natural feelings in the world. Try not to worry too much about it,
but do acknowledge it. I know this is hard but do try. Once you
acknowledge and admit you are stressed, you can now do
something about it. One suggestion is to ask for help from family,
friends, work colleagues, or ideally your manager, because you are
in it together or you should be.
If possible, ask your manager for some advice and coaching on
how to deal with work stress. If you do not feel that you can ask
your manager for advice in stressful situations, as you are not
confident or comfortable, ask a colleague for some advice as a
starting point. Of course, if there is a larger issue with your
manager that is causing stress, you may need to work for a different
manager. Food for thought.
Now is also a good time to think about your physical and
emotional energy levels. Feeling physically and emotionally drained
will affect your ability to deal overcome stress.

Above you have five common time management traps and five
tips, and again, this chapter started with traps and tips related to
goals. I believe that if you get your goals sorted, a lot of the rest
will begin to take care of itself.

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Schedule: 6 Traps and Tips

In the last section, I wrote about how to focus on your goals to be
more effective. In this segment, I am going to address six typical
time management traps and tips associated with your schedule.
Once you have sorted your goals, these need to spill into your
schedule. The question now becomes: how do you make the most
of your schedule? What is the most effective way? What traps do
you have to avoid?

Schedule Trap No. 1: The small stuff is getting in the way

Trap: Do you find that you are getting lots of small stuff done but
nothing major achieved? Do you find that you are not making
progress on the more challenging items on your list?

Tip: Do Creative Work in Larger Blocks. Think about the creative

work you have to do and execute this in larger blocks. Do not do
this creative work in interrupted time. Schedule sixty / ninety
minutes and do this creative work in a contiguous block. Ideally, do
it earlier in the day before your head gets swamped with too many
other things.

Schedule Trap No. 2: Meetings are killing my schedule

Trap: Do you find that lots of time and energy is wasted in
meetings?

Tip: Have meetings later in the day. Meetings tend to have an

energy all of their own, hopefully good energy, but not always the
case I admit! If the meeting has good energy, then you will be
carried by it.

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As the day goes on and you are a little bit more tired, you will
hopefully pick up the energy of that meeting instead of investing
more of your own.

Schedule Trap No. 3: My Desk is a Mess!

Trap: Do you find that your workspace is distracting you and does
not help your productivity?

Tip: Two computer screens and a tidy desk. For productivity and a
better use of your schedule, I recommend two monitors or one
very large screen on a moveable arm to give you more free space
on your desk. The monitor arms give you more clutter-free space
on your desk, which is good for productivity.
There is so much information flying around these days, so
much information to process, compare and work through that
having two screens where you can look across a wider space and
drag-and-drop between the two is a very helpful productivity aid.
There is no point in asking some people to keep a tidy desk but
if you can at all rise to this challenge, please try for the sake of a
more productive schedule!

Schedule Trap No. 4: Getting Tired

Trap: Do you find that you are getting tired at work?

Tip: Take Breaks. If you want to get more out of your schedule,
stop doing work and take some breaks! At least every hour or
ninety minutes, take a short break. Walk away and come back. The
suggestion is not to do four to six hours of solid work because you
just will not be as productive.
There is plenty of extra advice in the earlier chapter, “Manage
Your Energy”, if you are feeling more tired than you believe you
should be – but for now start with taking breaks away from the
desk.

Schedule Trap No. 5: Creativity does not happen at my

computer screen
Trap: Do you find it difficult to be inspired and get creative ideas at
your desk?

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Tip: Get away from your desk! If you have creative work to do
such as reviewing a document or creating a new strategy, then get
away from your desk and your computer. Find a space that is
creative for you.
I have quite an old chair that the office-design folks would
prefer to remove from our office, but it is still very comfortable. I
sit in that chair with a document or a notepad to get away from my
desk and do some of my creative thinking there, even though it is
only three feet away! Similarly at home I have a go to space in
which I find it easier to be creative. This space works for me.

Schedule Trap No. 6: Disconnected from my colleagues

Trap: Do you find that you are not always sure what is happening
with the team? Do you find that priorities change and you are not
always told? Do you waste time as a result? This can be frustrating.

Tip: Invest in productive team meetings at least once a week. For

example, the BrightWork Engineering team do a daily stand-up at
11am for ten minutes or so and a more formal meeting once a
week using a pre-set agenda. These sessions are great team
communications and they save a lot of time on the back-and-forth
throughout the week.

These are six traps and associated tips to take into consideration
to help you make the best use of your schedule all day every day.

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Distractions: 7 Traps and Tips

In this section, I am going to talk about the inevitable distractions
and interruptions that eat away at your time. I will walk you
through seven of the most common traps that distract you from a
productive schedule. I will also give you seven tips to help
minimize these distractions.

Distractions Trap No. 1: I Am So Connected

Trap: I know it sounds like a blessing that you are always
connected via email, social media, text messages, and mobile
phones but it is also a trap! It is so easy for others to interrupt you,
even if this is not the best thing for you right now.

Tip: Set aside specific times of the day when you will manage your
email, phone messages and your social media, for example, in the
hour before lunch and the hour before you leave in the evening.
There are many obvious advantages to this practice, the main
one being that your communications are much more effective and
enjoyable because you are not snatching at emails quickly. You are
now saying, ‘For this hour, I am doing emails and my other
communications. I will do them well and enjoy doing them and I
am not guilty because I should be working something important.’

Distractions Trap No. 2: Email

Trap: It is amazing how much time we lose by managing email
poorly.

Tip: Develop a systematic, but simple way, to manage your email.

Do not just “do email”. If you do not have an approach, the next

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chapter (“Save Time – Manage Your Email”) will give you a simple
process to consider.

Distractions Trap No. 3: The Random Thought

Trap: It is a real gift to have a flow of fabulous ideas. The time trap
is dropping what you are doing to research and action every idea
when it comes. Before you know it, you are all over the place!

Tip: To overcome this trap, have a simple place to write down

these ideas. For example, I use a combination of Microsoft
OneNote and Outlook Tasks. I create a task for action at some
time in the future and come back to it at that point to play with the
idea in a more relaxed way.

Distractions Trap No. 4: The To-Do list

Trap: We absolutely need the to-do list. It is a vital asset in our time
management toolbox. The trap is letting your to-do list become
your daily work and the main priority. Sometimes you do this
because it is easier to do, but in this scenario, you are not achieving
what you really need to achieve.

Tip: Have a daily slot allocated for your to-do list. Pick off a few
items, get them done, typically later in the day, and then happily
mark them off one-by-one.
You can, of course, steal minutes and hours throughout the day
where you can get these smaller and often important to-dos’
completed. You call your mother as you drive to work. You finish a
chunk of larger work earlier than expected (maybe because you
focus on it and it alone!) and you then do a few smaller but
important items from your to-do list before you start your next
scheduled major item of work.

Distractions Trap No. 5: I Can Multi-Task

Trap: Another big trap … multi-tasking! I wager when you measure
the time taken to do three things at once, you will find if often
takes longer than if you did one after the other in sequence and
with more focus. And multi-tasking is more stressful.

Tip: Pick 15/30/60/90 minutes to do one thing really well instead

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of stressing yourself trying to do five things at once. It is good to

have the multi-tasking skill, but use it when you have to and not as
a default, as this can be a real time trap.

Distractions Trap No. 6: Open Office Communication

Trap: BrightWork has a fabulous, wonderfully designed modern
open office. However, it can be a trap when people come up and
they think, ‘Oh it is so easy to get to Éamonn, let me ask him this
or that’.

Tip: Develop some protocol for working in the open office, so you
do not get constantly distracted. You want to encourage
communication and collaboration, but you might say to these
people, “Jack, I am looking forward to talking to you about this; let
me finish what I am doing and I will come back to you later”. Nine
times out of ten, this will be just fine. Every now and again, it will
be urgent for that person to meet sooner and of course, you will
need to accommodate this.

Distractions Trap No. 7: Your Personal Time Waster (e.g.

Time "TV Channel / Internet Surfing")
Trap: Most of us do something that is a complete waste of time!
Mine is to surf through the TV channels looking for something
better to watch! What is yours? Maybe it is spending too much time
online? Take this example – if I were to spend 15 minutes of
unproductive / unenjoyable time TV channel surfing every day,
then by my calculations this is the equivalent of three years of my
working life! Now that is a lot of time wasted!

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 Manage Your Time – 18 Traps and Tips

Tip: Figure out what your vice is. What wastes your time? What
takes away your energy? Figure how many minutes it sucks from
you each day and do the math. This calculation might help you
stop or at least cut down!
There, my friends, are seven traps and tips to help you
manage the inevitable distractions that eat away at your time.

Summary of ‘Manage Your Time – Traps and Tricks’

We started this chapter with a quote from Benjamin Franklin:
“Dost thou love life?
And of course the assumed answer is: you do. Then the quote went
on to say:
Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff that life
is made of.”
We have given you eighteen tips to overcome the many traps
and distractions that get in your way of having a productive week.
These distractions happen to everyone – what differentiates us is
how we deal with them.

This chapter presented:

- Five tips to help you achieve your goals
- Six tips to help better manage your schedule
- Seven tips to help you work around the inevitable distractions
that take away from your time.

Exercise
Did you identify ways to deal with the inevitable
traps that trip you up when trying to manage your
time effectively and efficiently?
Start: Set a goal to adopt one or two time
management tips in the next three to nine weeks.
Evolve: Make time to return to the other tips as needed.

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Save Time – Manage Your Email

Introduction
We live in an incredibly connected world. At any given time, your
desktop, phone, tablet, even your watch, might be beeping with
new email notifications. But all these emails are distracting you
from what you are supposed to be doing right now.

Motivation: Why Manage Your Email?

Did you know for every five unnecessary minutes you spend on
email each day, you are tracking to lose one full work year of your
life? Crazy, I know! In the image below, you can see how these
calculations are made. Feel free to adjust these calculations so they
are real for you.

The Essence
This chapter will give you six tips to help you manage email more
effectively and the next chapter gives four tips to help you better
use Microsoft Outlook to save time. The main message of these
two chapters is as follows: If you manage email more effectively
and more efficiently then you can save and recover significant
amounts of time.

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Exercise
As we start this chapter, I suggest you take a few
minutes to yourself to ask yourself these questions:
- How does email hinder your productivity?
Where is the drain on your time?
- What do you think you can do to stop these leaks?

Email Management – Six Tips

It’s amazing to think that something as productive as email can sap
your productivity. In any event, here follows six tips to help you
redress this and minimize the productivity drain.

Email Tip No. 1: Set Special Time Aside

You should set aside a specific time or times each day to do email –
maybe just before lunch and before you finish in the evening.
Let me expand. You know the alerts that pop up every time you
receive an email? You get a message in your tray or you get an alert
on your screen or both. Switch them both off right now! These are
distractions that you do not need. Whether on your phone, your
PC or another device, being constantly interrupted by an email
which is not relevant to what you are doing right now makes
absolutely no sense – turn these off. I acknowledge that there may
be some emergency situations when you need these alerts and if so
turn them back on as needed.
Allied to this, do not always open your inbox. If you have your
email open because you need it for work, for whatever project
work you are doing, then do not have your cursor in the inbox,
because waiting for all those new emails to come in will distract
you from what you should be doing right now. Ideally, when you
are not doing email, turn off Outlook. Do not have your email
open all day, as it is a serious productivity drain.
Now if you are thinking that you need access to your email for
some of your project work, I understand. In these situations, have
your email open and sit in the Drafts folder, so you can get access
to the older emails without getting distracted by the stream of new
emails arriving in your Inbox.
By setting a specific time aside for email, you are going to feel:

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“I am now doing email, I can do it in a less stressed way and I can

actually enjoy doing it. I can do it well.”

Email Tip No. 2: Clear your Inbox

Clear your inbox at least once a day or at a minimum once a week.
This is going to be pretty radical for some people but worth the
effort. Having ten, twenty, hundreds or thousands of emails in your
Inbox to search through is a complete distraction and a waste of
time.
In Tip No. 6, we will give you a very systematic approach to
help you manage your inbox better if you are not sure how.

Email Tip No. 3: One Archive folder and Search to Find

Emails
Do not create multiple folders to store different types of emails. If
you have many email folders, you will spend time trying to figure
which folder to put the email in and extra time trying to find that
folder.
Even worse, when you need to find an email, you will have to
waste time looking through folders to find the required email. The
more folders you have, the more time you waste.
Microsoft and most email systems give you a standard set of
folders like Inbox, Draft, Outbox, Sent and Deleted. Keep these
folders. The nice thing about these folders is emails automatically
move between them. The suggestion is you create one extra folder
and call it ‘Archive’. Then put all the emails that you want to keep
into the ‘Archive’.
A variant on this theme is helpful if you use the same email
address for work and for personal email. In this scenario you might
have two Archive folders (e.g. Archive-Work and Archive-
Personal). An alternative is that you setup an email address for
personal stuff like credit cards, bank, flight bookings, etc.

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Some emails are deleted anyway so they take care of sorting

themselves. Put anything you want to keep into ‘Archive’ and then
learn how to use ‘Search’ (and we will explain at the end of this
chapter how to do this). Once you learn how to use ‘Search’ to
manage your emails, it will save you a huge amount of time.

Email Tip No. 4: Pre-Composed Emails

If you think about it, you are probably asked some questions
repeatedly. Apart from the fact that this can be frustrating, you
typically do not have the time to answer well. Create an email to
keep in your Drafts folder, or another folder, and take the extra
time to answer those common questions very well in that one draft
email.
When you are asked questions again and again, go to your
Drafts folder, copy the answer and paste it into the email that you
are replying to. You will then have time to contextualize it,
personalize it and send off a considered answer that will really
impress the recipient. You will also feel much better about the
email response you are giving to that person.

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Email Tip No. 5: Do not Answer When Angry or Give Bad

News
Tip No. 5 might seem like an unusual one. Do not, whatever you
do, answer an email when angry and do not give bad news or very
critical feedback on email.
If you receive an email that makes you boil inside, do not reply
and whatever you do, please do not “reply-all”. Now if you must
answer the email, write an answer and save it but do not send it.
Come back a day later and review it. My advice is still not to send
it, but if you must, edit it again and then send it.
If you have bad news to give or very critical feedback to deliver;
if there is a row you want to have or if there is some stressful
situation to deal with, do not deal with it in an email. Physically go
to the person and have a one-on-one private meeting or phone the
person at a place where they can take the call with some privacy.
Now apart from the fact that these tips are good etiquette and a
better way to treat people, no matter how they treat you, you might
well ask, ‘Why are they in a time management chapter?’ The reason
is if you answer emails when angry or you send bad news on email,
you are going to waste more time in the long-run dealing with the
fall-out, so using email in this situation is not a time-saver. In fact,
it is quite the opposite.

Email Tip No. 6: Have an Email Management Process

We get so much email that there is no way you should do email in a
haphazard way. As email is something you do so often, you should
have a simple process for it. Here are five options on how to
process an email. You may break this down into something
simpler, but this will hopefully get you started:
- Option 1: Read and Delete
Read it once or do not, and delete. It is now gone out of
your Inbox.
- Option 2: Read and File
Read it once and file it in your Archive folder, not in one
of thirty other folders. Read it, understand it, and put it
away immediately into your Archive folder. Get it out of
your Inbox.
- Option 3: Read, Reply and File
Read it and reply immediately. Do not leave it so that you

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reply later. Reply right now. Remember, you are in the

zone and you have set aside an hour or so specifically to
do your emails. In this system, you are not checking emails
on your phone between meetings where you cannot reply
properly to them and they are distracting you. Read it and
reply to it right now and then either delete the email or file
it in that one Archive folder so it is gone out of your Inbox
and it is addressed. In this case, you have only handled the
email once.
- Option 4: Read, Flag and File
You read the email, and think, ‘OK, I need to do
something with this but I cannot respond properly today’.
In this case flag the email for follow up on that future day
and then file the email away in your Archive folder.
Another email gone from your Inbox. Gone but not
forgotten!
- Option 5: Read, Quick-Reply, Flag and File
You read it and you think, ‘Oh, I need way more time for
this’ but the person is looking for a response. Read it, reply
and say, ‘I will get back to you in a day or two’. Maybe set
some time expectation if you wish, but acknowledge the
email, so that they know you have it and then flag it for
follow up. Use Outlook or some such email client to put a
flag on the email, so that it goes to a particular day in the
future when you believe you will have time. Then file the
email in your Archive folder. Now the email is gone out of
your Inbox and the next time you think about the email is
the day in which you need to respond to it. This email will
not distract you every time you trip across it in your inbox.
The key here is that you only process each email once, or
maximum twice in some cases. The goal is that you have an Inbox
that is clear and you are not tripping over the same stuff repeatedly.
This concludes the six tips for making email a much more
productive experience. I am not suggesting that you will get to
every single tip tomorrow morning, but pick a few that work for
you and come back a week or two later if these tips worked, pick a
few more and gradually implement them until you get a better way
to manage your inbox and your email.

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Summary of ‘Save Time – Manage Your Email’

This chapter started with the following statement:
“For every five unnecessary minutes each day you spend on email;
you are on track to lose one year of your work life!”
This chapter gave six tips to help you manage email more
effectively and the next chapter gives four tips to help you better
use Microsoft Outlook. These tips will help you save five or more
minutes wasted on email every day, so you can save a year of your
working life!

Exercise
Where do you now stand on your email
management approach?
Start: Pick two or three practices you think will
really help you use email more effectively and
efficiently practice these in the next three to four weeks.
Evolve: Work the remaining practices.

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 Save Time – Four Microsoft Outlook Tips

Save Time – Four Microsoft Outlook Tips

In this chapter, I am going to give you four tips to make the best
use of Microsoft Outlook to optimize your time management.

Outlook Tip No.1: Shut it Down!

The first tip is to shut Outlook down! Close it!
Turn it off! The last thing you need is to be
distracted by emails all the time, so shut it off.
When you shut it off you can still use Outlook. If you look in
the tray on your computer, you should see the Microsoft Outlook
icon. Right-mouse-click on the icon to access a menu as you can
see below.

This menu will allow you to perform quick actions like writing
an email or creating a task. You can still use the basic features of
Outlook without ever switching it on. When you write a new email
in this fashion, the email will go to your Outbox and sends once
Outlook is reopened. You have now created an email or a follow-
up task without ever fully starting Outlook and getting distracted
by the many other emails in your inbox.

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Outlook Tip No. 2: Use Flags

We talked about using flags to process email and
here is an example. In my Inbox, you see that I
have an email but I am not ready to deal with it
now. I need to give it quality time later.
In this case I right-click on that email and a number of options
appear. One of them is ‘Follow Up’. I single-click on the ‘Follow
Up’ option flag for follow up to today, tomorrow, next week, or a
more specific date.

In the above screenshot I am saying, ‘Follow Up’ tomorrow. It

now becomes a task on tomorrow’s calendar. I move the email to
my Archive folder and it is now gone out of my Inbox and out of
my way. The distraction is removed.
When tomorrow comes and I am looking at what I have to do
for the day, I will see this email as a ‘Follow Up’ task with the
attachment. At the time of the day when I am handling tasks, I will
process this one carefully. Once I have processed the email, I can
then mark it complete. The email is now gone from my ‘Task’ list.
The suggestion is learn how to use ‘Tasks’ and the ‘Follow Up’
flag as a way to handle emails by bringing the emails to a time and
place when you are ready to deal with them. This gets them out of
your Inbox and your headspace in the meantime.

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Outlook Tip No. 3: Use ‘Search’

Earlier in this chapter, we talked about using
‘Search’ to find emails instead of having multiple
folders. The scenario we are dealing with now is
that you have old emails in one ‘Archive’ folder or
maybe in lots of different folders if you are not using this system.
In either case, you now want to find an old email.
In your head you are thinking, ‘I got an email from Slater? Was
it to Anderson? Was it about updates?’ What do you do?
Instead of crawling through multiple folders and looking for the
needle in the haystack, put your cursor in the Outlook ‘Search’ box
to access the Outlook ‘Search’ ribbon. Now you can use the ribbon
to build your search or once you get used to ‘Search’, you can start
typing, e.g. “From:slater To:anderson update”. Search will hunt through
all your email folders including the deleted and sent emails, and it
will bring back any emails that satisfies these criteria.

‘Search’ can be used to mimic your thought process and is

much faster than manually searching multiple folders. Learn how to
use search. Take the five to ten minutes. It will save you a huge
amount of time.

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Outlook Tip No. 4: Use Tasks

We all have a “To-Do” list – or we should have!
Why not manage your “To-Do” list in the Outlook
‘Task’ folder? Every time you think of something
to do, just add a task to Outlook. There is also a
nice feature called “recurring task”. Every time you complete the
task, it reappears one week or month later as you specify. Tasks can
then be viewed:
- In the Outlook Task list
- In the Task pane of your Outlook calendar – so you can
see the tasks for a particular day
- On your phone
- On a browser on any PC.

Exercise
Start: Pick one of the Microsoft Outlook tips that
you think might be of help and try it out.
Evolve: Work the remaining tips that look useful
in the weeks ahead.

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 Section 5. Situational Leadership
Introduction
The previous section explored elements of personal leadership.
Managing your energy and time, developing a healthy attitude, and
understanding your personality will make you a happier and more
effective project manager! The question now becomes – how do
you lead others?
"As a leader, you will never get ahead until your people are
behind you."
- John C. Maxwell (1947-), Renowned Leadership Thinker

Motivation: Why does Situational Leadership Matter?

Collaborative project management is about people working
together to innovate, to transform, and to improve. As a project
manager, you should empower your team to become leaders in
their own right. This will make for a fulfilled team and more
project success.

The Essence
In taking a proactive approach to your situational leadership styles,
you will be better placed to lead your team as the situation
demands. It is vital that you develop a leadership style that works
for you, your team, and collaborative project management.

Exercise

Think about your current leadership style. Do

you have an approach or set of approaches for
different situations?

What aspects would you like to work on and improve?

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Manage Meetings
Introduction
“A meeting is an event where minutes are taken and hours
wasted.”
– James T. Kirk (William Shatner's character from Star Trek)

This quote is frequently cited about meetings but I cannot find the
original source of the quote so it is likely not from the TV series
Star Trek. However, it is a nice articulation of what many of us
experience! Meetings are so often such a waste of time. Sad really.
Good meetings are essential to collaborative project
management. Poor meetings are detrimental to project harmony
and project success. Be intentional about how you facilitate
meetings and do not take this for granted.
My test of a meeting is simple enough these days. Did we leave
the meeting with more or less energy than we had beforehand? A
good meeting should energize us. If you stop reading this chapter
and get nothing more than the idea of this “meeting energy test”, I
feel your time will not have been wasted – unless of course you do
not try out this test!

Motivation: Why Manage Meetings?

You need good project meetings so the team feel connected,
involved, and informed. You need positive meetings to make good
decisions for the project. Think of the cost of a poor meeting. Four
people in a meeting for one hour is pretty close to one working day
by the time you add up preparation time and follow-up. That is a
lot of wasted time and energy. Poor meetings often lead to poor
decisions, which carry the cost much further than the direct
meeting time. Bad meetings can be very expensive!

The Essence
As you know by now, we at BrightWork are exponents of the
“Start|Evolve” approach to improving project management
success. None of us has time to get every process perfect today. To
paraphrase the 4th century North African bishop, Saint Augustine,

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“Make me perfect, but not today Lord”.

This chapter gives you one meeting practice to start with and
nine further meeting practices to consider evolving with, and also
gives you sample agendas for different types of meetings.

Exercise
One of the main points of this chapter is that a
meeting should leave the participants with the
same, or ideally, more energy as they leave the
meeting compared to when they walked in. Do
your project meetings achieve this? This is a simple but important
leadership test.

Manage Meetings – Start with a Facilitator and

Agenda
1. Have a DAFT meeting!
“We will have DAFT meetings and by doing so we will be clear on: Desired
outcome, Agenda, F acilitator and T ake Aways.”
Be clear on what the Desired outcome of the meeting is and set
the meeting Agenda in service of the particular meeting objective.
Have a Facilitator, typically the Project Manager, who starts the
meeting by explaining the desired outcome of the meeting,
proposes the agenda, and critically, keeps everyone to the agenda.
A good facilitator will help attendees “park” items that are not
essential to the desired outcome of this particular meeting. Ask the
team to be guided by the facilitator for the meeting.
I will say that not everyone has the skills of a good meeting
facilitator. Either select a person with strong facilitation skills or
have a person trained. As the project manager, you may wish to ask
someone else to facilitate the meeting for any one of three reasons.
Firstly, you can focus more on the meeting content rather than the
meeting process. Secondly, you may not be the best person to
facilitate the meeting – this may not be your forte. Thirdly, you may
wish to have people more involved and engaged on a project being
managed collaboratively.
As the meetings ends, be sure to summarize so people

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understand and agree the main Take Aways. Some people will have
wandered mentally in the middle of the meeting, so this summary is
an important way to make any decisions or actions items clear. If
the meeting is important and you are worried that people may
forget the key decisions and action items, ask one of the team to
write-up the meeting minutes.

Manage Meetings – Evolve the Practices

You can evolve to meetings that are more successful by taking on
board some of the extra nine practices below. Copy and use these
practices as you see fit and use with your team.

2. Meeting Review
“We will review each meeting as it ends to see if it was a good meeting or not.”
As the meeting ends, ask the participants, “How did we do on
the energy test and with respect to meeting objectives?” If you get
critical feedback, ask the team how to improve the next meeting.
Of course, you need to be careful. You know the old joke about
having two economists in the room and then having three
opinions. With a collaborative project team, you will have many
opinions, and some may well be contradictory. That is the strength
of a good team – many diverse inputs. Listen to the input of your
team and decide what to accept. You cannot satisfy everyone.
Select the ideas you feel will improve your meetings. Run your
decisions by the team to get their understanding and agreement.

3. Small Meetings
“We will not invite people who do not really need to be there. Rather we will
keep meetings as small as we can.”
In most cases, I have found small teams achieve more. They
tend to be effective and efficient. If you are inviting everyone just
so they know what is going on, find other, more efficient ways to
communicate. If you notice that people are inattentive or doing
email while at your meeting, perhaps they do not need to be
present.

4. Fewer Presentations
“We will not present at meetings. We will circulate the meeting materials three

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days in advance, so people can read in their own time and at their own pace.”
The brain can read and process way faster than people can talk
and present – maybe up to five times faster. I often see people
daydream or do email when someone else is presenting at the
meeting! Allied to this, we all process new information differently,
so it is helpful to send the meeting materials in advance to let
people prepare in their own way and in their own time. You can
then spend the valuable meeting time talking about the materials
rather than introducing them.

5. Prepare in Advance
“We will come prepared, or we will say we are not prepared.”
I will cancel a meeting if I am not properly prepared in advance.
I hate to waste everyone’s time. If I am not prepared and it is vital
to proceed with the meeting, then I will fess up so the meeting
facilitator is aware and can adjust the meeting style if necessary.

6. Keep to Time
“We will start and finish on time. We will let the team know if we are
running late and request their consent.”
It is bad enough that meetings can be long, but when they run
longer than scheduled, the rest of the day is delayed. If many
people are at the meeting, these delays affect other people and
groups not at the meeting. Sometimes this is necessary. However,
more often than not, this is due to a poorly managed meeting. It
can be very helpful to assign timings to an agenda to track as the
meeting progresses. If you are running over on one item, maybe
you defer an item to the next meeting so the meeting does not end
late.
You can also use the agenda to let the team know if the meeting
is likely to run over in case anyone needs to leave.

7. Vary the Location and Style

“We will mix it up, e.g., walk outside while we meet, meet at a different
location, invite an outside speaker / listener etc.”
Funny how the world conspires to help us! As I was writing this
section, a work colleague needed to talk through a difficult
situation and get some inputs. Given that the day was sunny, we
walked outside. A pleasant experience for a difficult conversation.

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The situation in question was tight and tense, so it was good to get
out of the office where there are less physical constraints.
If you have meetings that occur with great frequency and have
the same agenda, people can get jaded. It is good to mix it up.
Identify what works for you and your team. I must say that I do
like to walk and talk. It suits my personal communication style.
It can also be good to get an outside speaker or listener.
Recently, one of our projects had a quarterly review. For this
review, we invited a retired leader to come and listen to our plans.
He gave very good insights but also affirmation to the team,
helping everyone know we were on the right path. The plans did
not change radically, but the team were more energized.

8. Active Listening
“We will properly listen before we comment. ”
There are times when we need to actively talk back and forth.
There are also times we need to really listen, to actively listen,
before we fully understand where someone is coming from. We
have all experienced people who interrupt constantly, even if very
politely … “sorry for interrupting, but”! At meetings, I see some
people physically shaking they are so anxious to speak and respond
– but in some of these cases, I clearly have not yet made my main
point! Sometimes it is worth remembering that we were given two
ears and one mouth. As a meeting facilitator, it is important to
moderate so that the right amount of listening and talking takes
place.

9. Pay Attention
“We will pay attention and we will not check email or phones.”
I have been at meetings with people who miss the main points
as they were checking email or phone messages and then delay
everyone due to their inattentiveness. Someone who is talking or
presenting may view this as disrespectful. Ask people not to check
phones or emails, except in exceptional circumstances. Promise
them a shorter, more effective meeting as a result.

10. Action Items

“We will take our action items seriously and complete them on time.”
When the team complete their meeting action items on time,

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the project and the subsequent meetings proceed much smoother.

As a project manager, you need to set this expectation. Thank
people for timely completion of action items and call people out
for the opposite – unless there are good reasons.

Other Ideas
I am in no way suggesting that the above meetings practices are the
only or the best ones – but they are a good place to start. Pick and
choose from the practices above as you see fit and then do some
extra research to find other practices you would like to try.

Meeting Agenda Templates

The prior sections outlined a set of ten good meeting practices. I
suggested that you start with one practice and if it works, evolve
with more ideas from the list. The first best practice on the list
included the importance of having a meeting agenda. This
section has a few sample Project Management Meeting Templates
for different types of meetings to help get you started. Enjoy!

Project Sponsor Meetings

Very good sponsors are really busy, so you need to make good use
of the meeting to gain their respect and thus their help. Here is a
sample agenda that you might consider using with your Project
Sponsor:
1. Review and agree the agenda
2. Update on progress to goals
3. Resolve open risks, issues or change requests
4. Review pending decisions
5. Other feedback for the project manager?
6. Any Other Business (AOB)
7. Summarize the meeting outcomes.
Here are some tips to make the most of this agenda outline.
1. Review and agree agenda.
- Agree the desired meeting outcome. Explain to the
sponsor what it is you wish to achieve and ask what
they want to get from the meeting.
- The sponsor might not be thinking about your
project as you meet, so this is a good way to get

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alignment as you start the meeting.

2. Update on progress to agreed goals.
- The sponsor will want to know where you are with
the project, even if only at a high level, before they
relax into helping you with the project success
- Ideally, use pre-agreed dashboards with the schedule,
KPIs, status reports, etc. when giving this update.
This will give the sponsor confidence in your
management ability and save time. It will also allow
the project sponsor to self-report, and stay
connected and involved between meetings.
3. Resolve open risks, issues or change requests.
- In an earlier chapter of the handbook, I covered
“Stage 4 – Track and Re-Plan the Project”. This
chapter outlined a set of steps to help bring the
project back in line with the project goals.
- As part of this agenda, you should acknowledge,
understand, and deal with those big rocks in the way
of project success. Typically, these are risks, issues or
change requests. These rocks may also change the
project outcomes, so the sponsor needs to know.
4. Review pending decisions.
- A stitch in time saves nine. It can help to talk the
project sponsor through any major decisions you are
about to make and get inputs to save time later on.
5. Other feedback for the project manager?
- It is always good to ask the sponsor for other inputs
or feedback.
- You will typically get some extra advice from a good
project sponsor. And it shows you are open to
feedback, which is important.
6. AOB (Any Other Business).
- At this stage of the meeting, cover any small points
or items that need attention but should not take up
the entire meeting. Keep the front part of the
meeting free for the more important items.
7. Summarize the meeting outcomes.
- Recap the meeting in terms of decisions, outcomes,
or action items, or all of the above.
- If required, circulate meeting minutes with detail of

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items covered, assigned tasks and any agenda items

not covered.

Project Team Meetings

You do not want to have project meetings for the sake of meetings
so you do need to be careful with how these are run. Here is a
sample agenda you might consider using with your team.
1. Review and agree the agenda with the team
2. Review, discuss and resolve any open issues
3. Look at upcoming tasks for next week
4. Project process and approach – any adjustments needed?
5. (Time Permitting) Tasks achieved last week
6. AOB (Any Other Business)
7. Summarize the meeting outcomes.
These tips explain the suggested agenda further.
1. Review and agree agenda with the team.
- This brings the team to the same page as you start
the meeting. Remember that the team are likely
working on different tasks and on different projects,
so this alignment can be helpful and necessary.
2. Review, discuss and resolve any open issues.
- I like to get the problems out of the way at the start
of the meeting when energy levels are high.
- As a project manager, ask people for the issues and
for their suggestions on how to address the issues.
Do not assume on a collaborative project that you
have to solve all issues by yourself. Set the opposite
expectation with your team.
- Be careful that the issues are “real issues”.
- When you start a meeting with the issue discussion,
it shows you are realistic. By asking people to bring
suggested resolutions to every issue, it shows you
trust their judgement. This is very empowering for
the team.
3. Look at upcoming tasks for next week.
- What typically happens on projects is that tasks are
defined in outline as a project starts. As the timing of
the task approaches, discussion and definition is
often needed.

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- There will be many tasks in the week ahead. You

may not need to discuss them all. With the help of
the team, select the key tasks or deliverables on the
dock for this week coming, and talk these through.
Allow and encourage other team members to give
inputs.
- This will help reduce surprises and eliminate any
confusion around upcoming tasks.
4. Project process and approach – any adjustments needed?
- In an earlier chapter of this handbook, I covered
“Stage 1 – Initiate the Project”. In this stage, I
suggested that Step B was to “Decide the Project
Management Process”.
- There is no reason to assume that the decisions
made in this early stage are still 100% correct. Maybe
it is time to adjust some aspect of how the project is
coordinated or run. Now is a good time to check.
- This is a respectful reflection to offer team members
on a collaborative project. It explains that team
members have a real say in how the project is run.
5. (Time Permitting) Tasks achieved last week.
- If time permits, it is good to review the tasks or at
least the highlight tasks from last week.
- You might be wondering why this is so late in the
agenda. I find that people will talk at length about
what was achieved at the expense of talking about
what is yet to be achieved. Do not let the meeting
descend into a history lesson as the meeting starts! It
will steal too much valuable group meeting time.
- If you would like to highlight a significant milestone
or achievement, send a quick update email to the
team after the meeting.
6. AOB (Any Other Business).
- At this stage of the meeting, cover any small points
or items that need attention but should not take up
the entire meeting. Keep the front part of the
meeting free for the more important items.
7. Summarize the meeting outcomes.
- Recap the meeting in terms of decisions, outcomes,
or action items, or all of the above.

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- If required, circulate meeting minutes with detail of

items covered, assigned tasks and any agenda items
not covered.

Problem Solving / Creative Meetings

Problems occur on all projects. Creative solutions are always
needed to deliver on some of the project requirements. The team
generally has or can come up with the solutions. You just need to
give them the time and space. There are many ways to run the
brainstorm style of meeting. In this section, I will explain the
“ABCD” agenda that we use at BrightWork.
1. Agree the Aim of the meeting and Ask lots of questions.
2. Brainstorm in a Blue sky (open, creative, and imaginative,
with no limits or boundaries) manner all the possibilities.
Allow no critique at this stage and instead encourage
questions to clarify.
3. Enter into a robust but respectful set of Conversations
with healthy Critique and lots of Constructive Conflict. At
this point in the agenda, it is important to push the
boundaries of the ideas being proposed.
4. Discuss lots and with as much consensus as possible, make
good Decisions. Include a mechanism to check the
outcome.
Once your team becomes familiar with this template, you can
use a shorter version of the “ABCD” agenda.
Shorter Option:
1. Ask questions; Agree the Aim
2. Blue-sky Brainstorm
3. Critique with Conflict
4. Discuss and Decide.
Shortest Option:
1. Aim
2. Brainstorm
3. Critique
4. Decide.

Summary of Manage Meetings

Start with one or two of these practices explained above, and with

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these practices, experience success. Once the initial success has

been experienced, select and adopt some of the other practices.
- We will have DAFT meetings and we will be clear on: Desired
outcome, Agenda, Facilitator and Take Aways.
- Meeting Review: We will review each meeting as it ends to see
if it was a good meeting or not.
- Small Meetings: We will not invite people who do not really
need to be there. Rather we will keep meetings small.
- Fewer Presentations: We will not present at meetings. We will
circulate the meeting materials 3 days in advance, so people can
read in their own time and at their own pace.
- Prepare in Advance: We will come prepared, or we will say we
are not prepared.
- Keep to Time: We will start and finish on time. We will let the
team know if we are running late and request their consent.
- Vary the Location and Style: We will mix it up, e.g., walk
outside while we meet, meet at a different location, invite an
outside speaker / listener, etc.
- Active Listening: We will properly listen before we comment
- Pay Attention: We will pay attention and we will not check
email or phones.
- Action Items: We will take our action items seriously and
complete them on time.
It is not at all hard to run good meetings, but you need to be
intentional and make it a priority. I wish you good energy meetings!

Exercise
Does your team need better meetings?
Start: Select one or two of the above practices to
get your project meeting management to where it
needs to be.
Evolve: Cycle through these practices and over the course of a few
weeks and months make more improvements that are relevant to
your meeting management.

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 Make Good Decisions

Make Good Decisions

Introduction
“Most high officials leave office with the perceptions and
insights with which they entered; they learn how to make decisions
but not what decisions to make.”
– Henry A. Kissinger (Secretary of State, USA, from Sept. 1973 to Jan.
1977)

I believe that Henry Kissinger has it right. We really learn to make

decisions once we start management. When I think back on my
own management training, decision making was not a topic we
studied very formally. However, on reflection, making good
decisions is a key part of Project Management and making
transparent decisions with the team is a critical part of
Collaborative Project Management. This chapter will guide you
through three simple models to make good decisions and will also
briefly discuss the role of personality in decision making.

Motivation: Why Focus on Decision Making?

Project Decisions: Every decision you make as a project manager
helps or hinders the project. Each decision can make the project
shorter or longer, less or more expensive, simpler or more
complex. Each decision can improve or dis-improve team morale,
making the team feel better or worse about their participation on
the project.
Personal Decisions: Every non-project decision you make affects
your mood, your disposition, and ultimately, your leadership. If you
are happy as a person, then this will come across to the team and
will help the team morale. It is important for you to make good
decisions (inside and outside of work). It is also important for your
project team that you make and facilitate good decisions.

The Essence
Have a considered approach to make decisions. Involve others

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collaboratively in key decisions. For big decisions, communicate

the intended decision making process upfront and later share the
results.

Exercise
How do you make decisions today? Reflect on
some of the decisions you made recently at work
or in your personal life. Think through some of the
larger life decisions you have made over the years.

Collaborative Project Management – Decision

Points
Decision points occur at all five stages of Collaborative Project
Management. As a project manager, you need to merge knowledge
and experience of project management practices with the specific
context of your team, the project, and also, mature decision-making
approaches.

Making Decisions – Using Your Gut

Most of our decisions are made on gut instinct in a matter of
seconds and usually less than a minute. This is the most common
way to make a decision. Sometimes you just know the right
decision and the right course of action is obvious. If you know, you
know! And if you are right, then you have nothing to worry about.
But what if you are wrong? If you are wrong, you will find out
or be found out. If you make an instant decision, be prepared to
adjust if you are wrong. Be courageous, flexible, and open enough

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to reverse the decision if it is wrong. Not everybody finds this easy,

but it represents the best of honest leadership.

Making Decisions – a Holistic Approach

This holistic decision-making process is as follows:
- Remember the privilege of choice
- Frame the decision
- Start with indifference
- Continue with a head/logical decision
- Confirm with a heart decision.
A tip from experience: do not make an important decision
when you are feeling bad. You may well make a very poor decision.
Wait until you feel better.

Remember the Privilege of Choice

We can sometimes feel burdened by pending decisions and this is
understandable. However, many times the decisions represent
choices between options that all improve the situation. In these
cases, it is important to cut ourselves some slack and enjoy the
decision making process. Remember that in many situations, we are
electing which path to follow – it is our choice. In decision making,
try to enjoy the freedom of choice and free will that we have.

Frame the Decision

Name and frame the reason for the decision. Remember, some
items are not really up for decision, so be careful not to bring every
matter though a decision making process. For example, you are
behind on the project and you would like to bring on two more
people to the project, but your sponsor has explicitly said that the
resources at this stage of the project are fixed. Save yourself and
others the energy and stress. At this stage, decide if there really is a
decision to be made.

Start with Indifference

Sometimes the decision is not obvious; you need time and a
decision-making process. If you need time to make the right
decision, do not start with the decision already made in your head.

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Do not have the end (a pre-ordained decision) justified by the

means (a biased decision-making process). Start by being
indifferent, unbiased, and impartial. Move yourself to this more
neutral state. Desire the right outcome. If this is a project related
decision, remind yourself of the project objectives or goals. If this
is a personal decision, be mindful of your own goals and values.
This level of detachment can be difficult but it is important and will
help you to make a better decision.

Continue with a Head / Logical Decision

You can continue the decision-making process with a logical
approach. Some suggested steps follow:
- Question: Start by listing the questions that are on your
mind and start to answer the questions as best you can at
this stage.
- Research: Do some desk research:
- Gather more data/information
- Do not be limited by what you know.
- Consult: Ask for help with the decision. Consult with
those involved and LISTEN
- Get other perspectives but be mindful that you may
be still making the decision yourself.
- Analyse: List the options that you now believe you have.
Lay out and weigh up the pros and cons of each option.
List the advantages or benefits of each choice. Also, list
the disadvantages or potential damages of each option.
- Decide: Make a reasoned decision:
- After the research, consultation and analysis, if you
are sure that the decision is right and obvious, then
run with it. Commit to the decision and get fully
behind it. Give it every chance of success. Commit.
- If this is a big decision, do not confirm the decision
immediately, but pause and confirm with a heart
decision (see next section).
- Communicate: Talk through the decision and the rationale
to those involved.
- Act: Take the actions that the decision warrants.
- Reflect: If this is a big decision, set aside future time to
reflect on the outcome.

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Confirm with a Heart Decision

It can happen that you have to make a big decision but you have
the luxury of a few extra days. And for important decisions, you
should take the extra time.
After you make the reasoned decision following a process like
the one above, you can sit with the decision and see if you still feel
mostly positive about the decision after a few hours and a few days
- not just immediately. Over these days, assume the decision is
made and imagine what it is like to live with that decision. Listen to
what your heart is telling you. Follow your feelings (the good and
the bad) and try to understand them. Do not go final on the
decision when you feel bad about it. Let it settle.
If the decision is a major life decision and you are still
somewhat unsure, then ask yourself the deathbed question.
Imagine you are at the point of death and you are reviewing your
life. Do you think you would be happy with this decision or not?
This may seem a bit dramatic, but in certain situations, it can help.
You can also use the “other person” technique to check
difficult decisions. Imagine you are advising someone you love,
respect and want the best for. What advice would you give this
person who was at this stage of the decision-making process? How
would you advise this person to proceed on the right course of
action? This can help to guide you.
I was asked to join the international council of a charitable
organization working with refugees. Even though I felt extremely
honoured by the invitation, my gut told me it would not make
sense to take on this additional responsibility. Yet, something did
not seem right about saying No, so I ran the decision through the
decision making process above, consulted with colleagues and the
decision still came out as a No. I sat with the decision for a few
days and in the end I was not able to say No. In this case I
followed my heart and said Yes. I have to say that I am now really
happy with this decision!

Making Decisions – with the Group

In workshops on team collaboration, I ask this question, “What
helps group creativity and decision making?” I tend to get answers
like chaos, critique, constructive conflict, and other varied inputs.
When I ask the same group the following question, “What hinders

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group creativity and decision making?”, I get a very similar list!

You want and need to involve the team in making creative and
solid decisions but you need an approach, a process. In the last
chapter, “Manage Meetings”, we explained the “ABCD” agenda for
creative problem solving. This can work very well to involve the
group in making tough decisions. You can find more detail on this
topic in that chapter, but here is a summary of an agenda for such a
group session:
1. Agree the Aim (e.g. what do we aim to decide)
2. Brainstorm in a Blue sky manner
3. Critique with lots of Constructive Conflict
4. Discuss and make good Decisions.

Personality Types and Decisions

Exercise
Think about how personality can affect decision-
making. How does your personality affect your
decision-making?

Some people are, by their very nature, indecisive. They find it quite
difficult to make most decisions. I often find these people very
loyal to the decision when they do make it. I am sure you know
people like this. Other people make decisions way too quickly
without considering all the consequences. These people are more
impulsive. Our personality certainly impacts upon our decision
making style.
How you primarily react to the world will affect your decision
making process. There are many ways to describe how we react to
the world, but one simple way is to say that we react from the head,
heart or gut.

Head centred More logical in our I think, therefore I

reasoning am
Heart centred More emotional about I feel, therefore I
life am
Gut centred Just know and do not I know, therefore I
think or feel as much am

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Is one of the above more naturally prevalent in how you react

to the world? If so, be aware of this when making decisions. A
good decision is made when the three centres (i.e. head, heart and
gut) are eventually in balance, as described in the holistic decision
making approach above.

The Credits
Credit where credit is due. Much of the content in this chapter is
adapted from a subset of the decision making practices as
explained by Ignatius of Loyola in his landmark book, ‘The
Spiritual Exercises’, from 1548. In these Exercises, Ignatius calls
these ways to make ‘elections’. Amazing to think that I reach back
to 1548 for decision-making practices. But at another level it is not
so amazing, as making decisions is a fundamental part of being
human and the human condition was not invented this century!

Summary of Make Good Decisions

Hard decisions are just hard. There is no getting away from this.
However, we can make them somewhat easier by having an
approach. If the decision is easy, a gut decision will be right. If the
decision is hard, then it will be fruitful to follow a holistic decision-
making process starting with a head decision and confirming with a
heart perspective. You can also involve the project team in parts of
the holistic decision approach and also by following an “ABCD”
style process.

Exercise
Where do you now stand on your decision-
making approaches and practices?
Start: Set a goal to practice each of the three types
of decision making in your professional (or
personal) life in the next three to nine weeks.
Evolve: Reflect on and summarise the decision-making processes
that works best for you. Decide if you need to do more research
and work on your decision-making.

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Cultivate Your Leadership Approaches

Introduction
“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do
more and become more, you are a leader.”
– John Quincy Adams, Sixth President of the United States

Motivation: Why?
This handbook is all about Collaborative Project Management and
it is pretty obvious that leadership is important to the success of
any project, inside or outside of work. Intuitively I think we all
know this, even if we do not often give the topic of leadership
enough focus.
If you are a new Project Manager, you really should think about
leadership. It is very important to have a set of process stages and
steps to deliver successful project management as described in
Section 3 of this handbook. They will be your map for
collaborative project management, without which you will get lost,
your project may fail, and your project team will be disappointed in
you. But even if you know how to navigate the project
management terrain very well, you will need to do so with a
leadership style and a set of approaches that works for you and also
works for collaborative project management. And if you are
earning your stripes for the first time, this may be difficult for you.
The last paragraph is all about you, but what about the team
members? There are numerous studies and surveys showing that
large percentages of the workforce are not properly engaged with
their company. If you are interested in these surveys, a good place
to start is at www.gallup.com. This lack of employee engagement is
a sad reality. I say “sad”, as I really believe that the vast majority of
people would prefer to be fully engaged and enjoying work. We
spend so much time at work – who wouldn’t want to be happier
and more engaged at work?
It seems only right and proper to cultivate a leadership style that
encourages higher levels of engagement from all team members.
And of course, on projects that aspire to be collaboratively

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managed, higher levels of engagement are vital, not optional. You

can and should set the leadership style and tone, and this chapter
aims to help you.

The Essence
There are so many definitions of leadership, but I do really like the
quote above, that I thought was from John Quincy Adams. The
quote articulates well that leadership is all about helping people to
get the best out of themselves. The fact that the quote was so old
gave it a bit more gravitas for me. But what do you know, he never
said this at all! Seems as if the quote, or a version of it, most likely
came from Dolly Parton, the singer and entertainer. In any event, I
think the quote is a great summary of an extremely positive
leadership style and worth using. The rest of this chapter will give
practical examples of how you might cultivate a collaborative
leadership style, but it would be good to measure your leadership
style from time to time against this quote. It is a high bar.

Exercise
Have you ever suffered or had to endure bad
leadership? On reflection, what did you learn from
this experience?
How does your leadership capabilities and style
compare to the quote above?

Have Core Values

People willingly follow leaders they like, trust, and respect. If you
lose the respect of the team, leadership becomes very difficult, and
sometimes too high a hill to climb. This means that the type of
person you are and the type of values you live by will affect not
only your leadership style but also your leadership success. People
will not follow the “do as I say, and not as I do” leader for very
long.
What values do you live by? What is your moral compass? Can
you go back to your family, faith, or philosophy to identify one?
What do you stand for? Does your company have core values that

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you believe in? Life is short and work is a big part of your short
life, so it is better to live by the same good values at work and
outside of work. If you decide to be selfish and put yourself first,
that is your personal choice, but it will not go down well on
collaborative projects. You will be found out!
At BrightWork, we have adopted these two core values:
- Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.
- Be the change that you wish to see in the world.
We could have adopted twenty core values, but choosing two
seemed to be the right decision for us, as it gave the two more
weight. We have set the expectation that we all work to these core
values, not just the managers. In management and in leadership, it
is important to set expectations, to set the tone.
The first core value (“do unto others”) covers our relationships
and interactions with each other, our customers, our partners, our
suppliers, and our wider community. It is such a fundamental value
that it saves having to define hundreds of other rules and protocols
as many actions can be judged by this one yardstick.
The second core value (“be the change”) protects us from
complacency and the status quo. It protects us from falling to the
low levels of dis-engaged team members. It gives us permission to
be the best that we can be. It expects our best and is excited by our
best.
As you cultivate your leadership approaches, please be aware
that the type of person you are and the way you treat people will
greatly influence your ability to be an effective leader. Also be
comforted by the fact that the practices in “Section 4 – Personal
Leadership” of this handbook will help you lead yourself to a good
place. Taking responsibility to lead yourself to a better place, one
day at a time, will help you become a strong leader for others. Are
you in that good place already or are you prepared to make the
commitment to get there?

Be Mission Focused
As a leader, you need to keep your eye on the mission and the
project goals. And you need to help people maintain that focus.
There is no point being a wonderful and inspiring project manager
if you are not goal focused! There is no benefit to motivating
people if you do not work with them to deliver the goods. Are you

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mission and objective focused?

Decide on a Leadership Model

You, as a new project manager, are now a leader. If you are
managing a project for the first time, then it is like getting your
stripes as we used to say in the military. Way back in 1980, in the
Army Cadet College, the first Chief of Staff I heard speak told us
that the biggest management jump was from Soldier to Corporal
(where the first two stripes were earned). It was the jump from no
management or leadership responsibility to some. It was the leap
from being one of the team members to being in charge of the
team.
In the military, there was a strict hierarchy and it was respected,
and as a young officer, I had authority as well as responsibility. At
the same time, as an officer, I was expected to respect and look
after the troops in our Cavalry squadron. Nothing else was
acceptable. The troops were expected to follow my lead and I had
to look after the troops. Young officers became very comfortable
with this apparent contradiction.
In BrightWork, we have adopted the norm that everyone on the
team plays the role of leader for some aspect of the work or
project. Everyone on the team is therefore a leader with given
autonomy. The area of work is either a project deliverable or what
we call a strategic deliverable. The former is pretty straightforward;
it is some key aspect of the given project. The latter, the strategic
deliverable, is a key piece of the company strategy for the current
year.
So continuing to use BrightWork as an example, the CEO (that
is me!), the other line managers, and the project managers have a
specific leadership responsibility for an area or a project, and every
team member has at least one area that they lead for the company
or project. The leaders, who are not line managers in the company,
have the freedom and autonomy to express themselves.
I do not place management on some special pedestal. Don’t get
me wrong, I see management as a very important aspect of running
a project or a company. But I also see sales, marketing, technical
architecture, design, finance, etc. as key skills we need, just like we
need management skills. I do, however, put leadership on a very
special pedestal. Leadership, from wherever it comes, makes all the

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difference in the world.

Very few leaders are able to achieve their goals alone, and each
leader at BrightWork, whether he or she is a line manager or not, is
given the authority to:
- Set expectations and get agreement on same with a wider
team of people (who may or may not be formally on a
project)
- Give real support to the team
- Hold team members accountable for deliverables (as
necessary).
This devolved leadership model works for us at BrightWork. It
really helps with the enjoyment and success of our projects.
What leadership model is right for your project or situation?

Decide on a Team Model

The last section outlined the leadership model we use at
BrightWork as an example. I do not mean to imply it is the best or
only leadership model. Clearly it is neither! However, it is a model
that is consistent with Collaborative Project Management.
Continuing to use BrightWork as an example, the next question
might well be: “What Team Model do we employ that is also
supportive of Collaborative Project Management?”
Each major team in BrightWork (e.g. engineering, sales,
marketing, customer success, etc.) has a Vice President (VP). The
VP is the leader with overall responsibility to lead and manage the
success of that business team. We like to call them teams rather
than departments. And each of these teams has sub-teams and so
on. Many of the major objectives of these teams require project
management to be successful. Each of these projects has a project
manager. Teams are formed as needed to deliver on these projects,
each with a designated leader. Individuals in the company will be
leaders on some teams and serve as team members on other teams.
Some teams will be self-managed and self-directed without a
formally appointed leader. In this respect, everyone in the company
(myself included) plays the role of team member on some teams.
What is the right team model for your project or group?

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Decide on Team Dynamics

Because our projects are collaborative, with non-managers playing
the role of leaders, we decided it was important to lay out the
dynamics of an ideal team at BrightWork. This was explained in an
earlier chapter of this handbook but is repeated here as it assists in
this context:
- Collegiate / Companions (friendly and enjoyable with no
need for fear)
- Collaborative (on the one team and on the one project
helping each other)
- Challenging (to each other – but respectfully) with the
Conflict required for innovation. Be comfortable asking
and answering uncomfortable questions
- Can do attitude – and no such thing as I/we can’t.

Credit where Credit is Due

A good leader should never claim the work of others as his or hers,
so I better fess up! In 2009, the local university MBA class had a
leadership lecture from the then Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Dermot
Earley. I was invited as a local business person, as we recruit from
the business studies department of this university. I was also
invited as I am ex-Army. The lecture was one of the best I have
ever heard on leadership. It was practical and extremely sincere.
You just knew that this man lived these principles. Sadly, this great
Army General and giant of a man died in 2010 while still serving as
Chief of Staff. A number of the desired leadership practices cited in
the next two sections come from that lecture and my prior army
officer training, and are marked with an *.

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Desired Leadership Practices

As noted above, we have a healthy situation at BrightWork in that
everyone is a leader for some aspect of work. This is what you
aspire to with Collaborative Project Management. The question
then becomes, what is expected of a leader? We found it both
necessary and helpful to set these expectations and they are offered
here to give you examples of the leadership practices you might like
to employ.
- *Integrity is key for leaders. Always treat others as you wish to
be treated. Remember one of the two core values from above
… “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.”
- Lead by example, remembering the other of the two Core
Values … “Be the change that you wish to see in the world”.
- *Leaders need to create a dream, a vision, a goal and
communicate this really well.
- *Leaders need to know themselves and be self-aware. They
need to practice what they preach and never bluff.
- *Leaders need to have external awareness and should honestly,
empathetically and respectively express:
- the joy of success, and say “Thanks” more often
- the pain of failure
- concern at slow progress.
In these honest expressions, leaders should empathize with
people and all such expressions should be in a calm and
controlled manner.
- Delegate Responsibly: The leader cannot and should not carry
all. Assign work to people; delegate what you cannot
reasonably carry.
- *People are really able for lots of change and will withstand
much if everyone gets fair treatment.
- *Always be fair, firm yet friendly – the 3 Fs.
- *Sincere communication is vital. Ask and listen well so you can
learn and lead.
- Do not make remarks on the person or personality; rather
focus on the actions, tasks and the job at hand.
- Give very critical feedback in private and in person in a one-
on-one setting – not in the open plan office, in a group
meeting or on email.
- *Leaders must be visible; they must be seen to be serving with

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the people they lead.

- *As a new leader you now have weight. Pull your weight - do
not throw it around!
- If you breach any of the above desired leadership approaches,
be big enough to admit it and apologize at the earliest possible
time.

Desired Team Member Practices

In the last few sections, I explained that every person in
collaborative project management plays the role of leader at some
point and we called out desired leadership practices. I also
explained that everyone on the team (including the project
manager) plays the role of team member. The next question then
becomes, what are the desired practices for the role of team
member? Here is a suggested list to get you started.
- *Integrity is key for all team members. Always treat others as
you wish to be treated. Remember one of the two Core Values
… “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.”
- Assume personal responsibility for the success of your
deliverables.
- Team effort is the key for greater success. Offer help to the
team. Be open and expect new tasks outside your own
deliverables.
- *Mistakes happen. Admit and get over them, but learn from
them always. Be comfortable to “fall upwards” (as was
described in the “Sharpen Your Attitude to Life” chapter).
- Expect issues from time to time. Deal with them quickly. Do
not let them fester. When the issue is sorted, leave it behind.
- Respect deadlines and sign-off dates for deliverables.
- This is a fast-paced environment at times with multiple,
simultaneous commitments, so you will need to periodically
invest in time management practices to be able to deliver on
your responsibilities.
- *You need the courage as a team member to do the right thing:
- Take the responsibility given to you and contribute to the
team.
- Challenge the direction and then accept the team
direction.
- Participate in the speed of the group.

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- Take moral actions in line with the two core values.

Situational Leadership: Dictate or Delegate

The leadership techniques and style you deploy will depend on the
situation at hand. There are several factors that help us understand
the situation. Let’s look at four:
- Ability Spectrum
Sometimes you will find the team members capable,
competent, and able to do the job at hand. And
sometimes they are on the other end of this spectrum
and not capable or trained for the tasks ahead.
- Attitude Spectrum
There will be days when you will find team members
energetic, enthusiastic and very willing. Then other days
you will find people on the team who are lethargic, lazy,
and could not be bothered.
- Time Pressure Spectrum
Sometimes there will be no pressure and it will seem like
you will have all the time in the world to get a task
accomplished and other times it will be an emergency,
with not a second to spare.
- Environment Spectrum
Some projects live is a very stable and well regulated
environment and others live is a manic, high growth,
unstable environment, sometimes even in crisis.
Plotting the above factors on a spectrum, the left-hand side of
the spectrum is less desirable than the right-hand side. In all cases
as a leader, you will try to shift the dials to the right. On the ability
spectrum, you can help people move to the right with more
training; people will also get there with time and experience. On the
attitude spectrum, you can find out what is causing the inertia of
the left-hand side and try to deal with these issues and bring the
energy to the right hand side. On the time spectrum, you can try to
buy the project more time to ease the time pressure. On the
environment spectrum, you can investigate what is causing the
chaos that is pushing the dial to the left-hand side and address
these issues to move the dial to the calmer right-hand side. But at
some stage the situation is as it is, and you have to lead from that
point.

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In any of these situations, the practices of leadership described

in the prior sections above should remain valid but the approaches
you deploy will vary depending on where you are on the spectrum.
Let me break these into three approaches:
- Show and Tell
If you are to the left of some or all of the above
spectrums, you will very likely need to show people how
to do the task or tell them to just do it. You will not be
able to hang about and hope it happens. In this
situation, you are giving instructions. The situation can
demand you to be authoritarian. You, of course, will be
hoping that this instruction will move people more to
the right of the spectrum so your involvement going
forward needs to be less invasive.
- Mentor and Participate
If you are mid-spectrum on some or all of the above,
you will likely help the person understand how to
deliver on the task at hand and you may also actively
participate as needs be. You are leaving the person with
the responsibility, but you are staying close!
- Coach and Delegate
If you are to the right of the spectrum, you are typically
in a great place. Easy Street! You will be talking to
someone about the desired outcome. They will be
asking questions and coming up with the first set of
answers themselves. You will be there to coach them to
the best performance but you will be delegating and
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leaving it to them.
All three approaches are valid. No one is better than the other.
You need to deploy the right approach for each situation.

Manage Poor Performance

Poor performance can come from a number of places. If you look
at the four spectrums above, you could imagine poor performance
coming from:
- Low capability: The person is just not able.
- Low motivation: The person is not bothered.
- Lack of time: Not enough time given to the job.
- Chaotic environment: The systems or processes are all
wrong or non-existent.
The key is to identify why the performance is poor. If you
examine the same four factors and ask “why is this” until you get
to the root cause, you might find some of the following to be true:
- Low capability
The person was not trained. The person just does not
have the aptitude for this kind of task.
- Low motivation
The person is not being compensated enough or is
suffering a poor manager. The person has a really bad
attitude and is displaying aspects of a bad character.
- Lack of time
The deadline was totally unrealistic. The person
completely miscalculated the time needed or planned
very poorly.
- Chaotic environment
The customer keeps changing their mind and is very
demanding. The person responsible did not deploy
proper and needed systems or processes.
So keep digging until you get to the root cause and reason for
the poor performance. At that point, the fix for the poor
performance will typically become obvious. If the fix is not yet
obvious, you may not yet be at the root cause of the poor
performance, so keep investigating. The truth shall set you free!
Once you get to the root cause, you will know whether you are in a

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‘show and tell’, a ‘mentor and participate’ or a ‘coach and delegate’

situation.

Agile Management
In a later edition of this handbook, I will find the time to write a
separate chapter on agile leadership and management. For now,
here are a few pointers to prompt your to research further.
I find these three principles to be instructive, as they help guide
my agile implementations:
- Incremental Deliveries
Deliver small amounts of the project or deliverable
sooner rather than later. Do not wait for the entire
project to be complete before delivering.
- Frequent Feedback
Setup mechanisms where you can listen to and get
feedback from the stakeholders. As you might imagine,
it is easier for the stakeholders to give feedback if they
are looking at incremental deliveries. These interactions
will be a great teacher.
- Build Trust
A true agile project requires good trust between your
team and the customer. Build this trust as you go
through the project. It is very important.
The following three practices are practical ways to deliver on
the principles above and are very common in agile:
- Sprints
Agree monthly or quarterly sprints of the key
deliverables.
- Backlog
Have a prioritized backlog for the as-not-yet planned
deliverables. This can serve to highlight the opportunity
waiting.
- Reviews
Relook at the progress, the sprints and backlogs on a
periodic basis.

Summary of Cultivate Your Leadership Style

Good leadership is a choice you make. Great leaders are not born

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thus. Great leaders make the necessary investments. This chapter

has lots of ideas and practices that will help you cultivate your own
leadership approaches and style.

Exercise
Start: Take some time to reflect on these practices above and then
select a few to implement on your current or next
project. (Do the same for every project you start).
Evolve: Do your own research – the internet is full
great materials and wisdom on Leadership. Take
the time to invest. Your efforts will be rewarded.

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 REP to New Habits

REP to New Habits

So, where to next? The leadership practices in the last chapter and
in the other leadership chapters of this handbook touch on the
areas of physical health, mental health, spiritual wellbeing,
intellectual alertness, professional and work advancement. They
will help with your attitude.
But quite honestly there are too many leadership practices in
Sections 4 and 5 of this handbook for one person to successfully
take into daily or weekly habit in one sitting. I hope you see this as
a positive. The same can be said of Sections 2 and 3 – there are
more collaborative project management practices than a new
project manager will be able to adopt in one implementation or on
one project. So please let yourself off the hook!
The trick is not to rush, but to gradually adopt the new practices
that appeal to you. The chapter on REP in Section 1 of the
handbook holds the key to gradual and successful adoption of
these new habits. REP will lead to higher levels of success,
capability, creativity and mastery for yourself and also for your
teams. If you set time aside to REP each week and try out just one
new practice or idea each week, imagine where you will be after a
few months or a year. Enjoy!

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Feedback Please
Congratulations on getting this far! I hope you enjoyed the journey.
I have plans for future editions of this handbook with extra topics
covered. As I release new editions, I will also strive to improve the
content of the existing material. Early versions of these new
chapters will be published on the BrightWork Collaborative Project
Management blog (www.brightwork.com). However, before I write
new materials, I need to know what you think of this edition!
Please do tell me what you like, would change or believe is missing
from this edition of the handbook. I will listen carefully to all your
experiences. Help me make this an even more useful handbook for
you and your colleagues. Please send all feedback to
[email protected].

Éamonn McGuinness,
BrightWork,
Boston, USA and
Galway, Ireland.
6h September, 2017.

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Free Collaborative Project Management Resource: Project

and Portfolio Management Toolkit

If you are ready to start implementing the practices outlined in this

handbook, you should also consider using a collaborative project
management tool.
Evaluating and selecting the right collaborative project and
portfolio management (PPM) software for your organization is a
challenging but essential step towards successful collaborative
project management.
The ‘Project and Portfolio Management Toolkit’ from BrightWork
will make this process a little easier.
Download this toolkit to access:
• A business case for deploying project and portfolio
management software
• Criteria to assist with the selection of a PPM solution for
your organization
• An accompanying Project and Portfolio Management
Weighted Scoring Sheet
• The opportunity to use the guide and scoring sheet to
evaluate BrightWork.

Click to Download

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