Project management is no mean feat in business. It is the glue that holds a business together and effective planning can be make or break for any company at any stage of its success.
As a business owner and worker, it is important for you to learn the essential skills surrounding project management and learn to see a project in a different way. There are many things you can do in terms of planning and foresight that will make a huge difference to the fabric of your operations and your success in the field.
If you are new to the idea of project management it will seem a little daunting and confusing at first. There are a lot of principles to learn such as the agile way of thinking that will change the whole way you view your business, and visual project planning could be a handy aid as you start out.
The effective planning of any project, whether it be the relocation of the office or the launch of a new product, is essential for your success. Make sure that you consider many different avenues for success and always keep in mind the methods that will be most effective for productivity of your company.
Project management can be a daunting prospect to think about, and if you are struggling or in a slump with your project management processes this year, here are some opinions and quotes from world influencers that can bring some inspiration back into your world.
A goal without a plan is just a wish. — Larry Elder
Data is like garbage. You’d better know what you are going to do with it before you collect it. — Mark Twai
The key to successful leadership today is influence not authority. — Kenneth Blanchard
Plans are worthless. Planning is essential. — Dwight D. Eisenhower
The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. — Amelia Earhart
To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe. — Anatole France
I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. — Maya Angelou
The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers. — Ralph Nader
Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. — Charles Swindoll
On design — “Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.” — Albert Einstein
If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else. — Booker T. Washington
When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps. — Confucius
A meeting moves at the speed of the slowest mind in the room. — Dale Dauten
It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently. — Warren Buffett
One of the true tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency. — Arnold Glasow
Everyone has a plan: until they get punched in the face. — Mike Tyson
I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions. — Stephen Covey
Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work. — Peter Drucker
The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant. — Max de Pree
It is not the strongest of the species that survive, not the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change. — Charles Darwin
The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails. — John Maxwell
If you want to test your memory, try to recall what you were worrying about one year ago today. — Rotarian
Long-range planning works best in the short term. — Euripides
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. — Theodore Roosevelt
Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless. — Thomas Edison
Management is, above all, a practice where art, science, and craft meet. –Henry Mintzberg.
Remember the two benefits of failure. First, if you do fail, you learn what doesn’t work; and second, the failure gives you the opportunity to try a new approach. — Roger Von Oech
The relationship between talent and management is uneasy, at best.- Jessica Savitch
There are no failures — just experiences and your reactions to them. — Tom Krause
Good management consists in showing average people how to do the work of superior people. — John D. Rockefeller
The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority.”– Kenneth Blanchard.
Those who plan do better than those who do not plan, even though they rarely stick to their plan. – Winston Churchill.
Failure is nature’s plan to prepare you for great responsibilities. — Napoleon Hill
Managing to have a sense of humour makes it a lot easier to manage people. — Steve Wilson
Project management is like juggling three balls – time, cost and quality. Program management is like a troupe of circus performers standing in a circle, each juggling three balls and swapping balls from time to time.- G. Reiss
Project management can be defined as a way of developing structure in a complex project, where the independent variables of time, cost, resources and human behaviour come together.- Rory Burke
Being a Project Manager is like being an artist, you have the different coloured process streams combining into a work of art- Greg Cimmarrusti
If you always blame others for your mistakes, you will never improve. — Joy Gumz
Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships. — Michael Jordan
Change before you have to. — Jack Welch
The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place. — George Bernard Shaw
In this business, by the time you realize you’re in trouble, it’s too late to save yourself. Unless you’re running scared all the time, you’re gone. — Bill Gates
Meetings are indispensable when you don’t want to do anything. — John Galbraith
People are more easily led than driven. — David Harold Fink
If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants. — Isaac Newton
High achievement always takes place in the framework of high expectation. — Charles Kettering
Operations keep the lights on, strategy provides a light at the end of the tunnel, but project management is the train engine that moves the organization forward. – Joy Gumz
Measure twice, cut once.- Carpenter’s Maxim
How does a project get to be a year late? One day at a time. — Frederick Brooks
Next to doing the right thing, the most important thing is to let people know you are doing the right thing. — John D. Rockefeller
Goals are dreams with deadlines. — Diana Scharf
Organization charts and fancy titles count for next to nothing. — Colin Powell
The conventional definition of management is getting work done through people, but real management is developing people through work. — Agha Hasan Abedi
The price of inaction is far greater than the cost of making a mistake. — Meister Eckhart
You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do. — Henry Ford
If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat! Just get on. — Sheryl Sandberg
Any person who selects a goal in life which can be fully achieved has already defined his own limitations. — Cavett Robert
Hopefully, these quotes will give you a nudge in the right direction and allow you to think outside the box for your next project.
Remember, project management is about planning ahead, being able to simultaneously work on several areas, and reducing the time spent on a project before launch as much as you can. You may consider project management like cooking a roast dinner. When you begin the process you need to gather all of the relevant ingredients (people, resources, budget) and lay them out in front of you. Once you have the ingredients you need to take each element and decide how long it needs to cook for (how long will each process in the project take?), and from this, you will want to ensure that every element of the roast dinner is on the plate at the same time, because no one wants cold roast potatoes.
In project management it is not a straight line where one task leads into another, it is like cooking a roast dinner where the meat goes in the oven, then in the meantime, you start peeling and preparing vegetables, making gravy, basting the meat, and plating the meal. Work on things in tandem for the best results.
We hope this article helped you think about project management in a different way and simplify it for you this year. Now go ahead and find success!
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