There is nothing as daunting sometimes as a great idea, a miracle of an idea, one that looks so huge and so ambitious that you pause for just a second too long and poof there goes your confidence. You are way too busy, how do you even start?
I have worked on some incredible projects – from bringing a magazine that wasn’t earning enough revenue back to its feet in 6 months – to a leadership festival for 250 young people, built from scratch – to arranging the seating plans for hundreds of people at a major award ceremony for some of the country’s biggest retailers and suppliers. A feat that still to this day makes me feel palpitations but equally makes me smile every time I hear ‘Move like Jagger’.
What they all have in common is planning – calm, considered, risk assessing, positive planning – that thing you probably don’t have the head space for right now – what with your social media, blogging, e-mails, phone ringing off the hook – I won’t go on! When you are on your own it can feel overwhelming but with a little help you will achieve that miracle of an idea.
I will use the festival as an example here, as it was by far my most independent feat and probably the project I am proudest of, but my goodness it was overwhelming at first.
I was working for a charity, The Knowledge to Action Foundation, having supported them as a volunteer with their annual project – The Youth Leadership Summit – the year before.
It was a wonderful thing, the teenagers who attended were given a master class from some of the world’s most inspiring individuals in leadership, friendship and success.
We sat around a table and I was asked to consider what this summit might look like as a festival – outdoors, massive marquees – hundreds of kids. We would need to raise every penny to pay for it and build the entire infrastructure; water, food, accommodation, toilet roll. Just think for a second how many ‘things’ you need for hundreds of people for a week! Not to mention the fact that we only had around 4-5 schools currently aware of the project and 50-60 kids attending annually – this was a huge jump!
This was the first time in my career that I was understaffed and I realised the genuine value of dedicated key supporters – people who have insights you don’t, someone who has risk assessed a festival before, interns to help with the thousands of calls and e-mails we had to do, kind parents of the children willing to volunteer at the event or help fund parts of it! Otherwise it was just the two of us, me and my Director – Jeanie. Check out Jeanie’s testimonial.
We found our venue, we hired an amazing man who basically was my go to ‘argh how do I do this?’ person. He was pretty nifty on a quad bike fishing young people out of the forest too – another story for another day!
My main roles in his project were: recruit the kids, create the infrastructure, negotiate with suppliers and raise the money. I had 6 months. Daunting? YES.
I won’t lie, I could have done with a HUGE team of paid, skilled, individuals, but I did it and this is how.
Excel
Now if you aren’t a fan, I appreciate you might be groaning right now but we aren’t talking the budget/numbers bit here – although of course it was useful for that. We are talking project management.
Basically you begin with a super simple structure.
In the first column you indicate the priority – the numbering system allows you to clearly see what you can do or what needs to be done before something else can be done. As you add an item to the ‘Task’ column, you need to decide there and then if you have a deadline, do you need anything to be able to start doing it and set the priorities for all associated tasks. If you need something to allow that task to occur, then you need to add that as a task and prioritise it. This is a logical, simple, brain dump.
Where I have indicated that I need a meeting with the Director to confirm the venue decision, I need to schedule this in advance, so that should be added as a task with a higher priority than deciding the venue. I don’t have to ‘think’ about this anymore, I just need to do it when the priority shifts to a 1.
Basically every tiny step on your way to completing a task needs to be added to this spreadsheet – tedious maybe, but this way you can shut off and have that glass of wine with your feet up knowing you are completely on top of your project. Go through, hide whats been done and decide what tasks can now be a 1 or are coming up to deadline and move them to the top. Ta-da – you have today’s to do list. THEN IGNORE THE REST.
You will be so much more productive when you aren’t hopping in and out of a hundred different jobs trying to remember what needs to be done, getting side-tracked by things that aren’t a priority yet.
Most importantly, if you are currently faced with a project or number of projects that feel completely overwhelming, the best thing you can do is seek help – whether from an expert or another pair of hands to plow through the work!
Find out what the list whisperer could do for you and your next project and let’s pump up this year’s ambition!
Leave a Reply