Are you looking for some project management tips
from someone who's wise,
someone who's been around to the block,
somebody who's worked in different industries?
Hey, you got me!
(hands clapping)
Guess what?
I'm going to share with you some tips,
really instrumental tips,
that I have used as a consultant on projects
on different organizations.
So you know what?
Let's get to it.
Now, I also have something really cool for you.
It's underneath this video.
It is a link to a free webinar on project management,
top five things as a very experienced project manager
I always do and I'm sharing it with you.
So look, go, it's going to help you.
It's only going be a positive thing.
So that's for you, my gift.
Hi, if you're new here, welcome.
My name is Adriana Girdler and you have landed
on the best practical project management channel
out there in YouTube world.
My personal opinion.
I would love it if you subscribed to this channel
cause we're giving out great content every single week
and it tells you if we're doing a good job.
Now on that note, let me share with you the tips that I use
as a seasoned professional.
Don't avoid conflict.
I made this number one for a really good reason.
Conflict, when you're dealing with projects
you're dealing with people and different personalities.
You are going to have conflict.
You're going to have conflicts.
You're going to have differences of opinion.
So it becomes really important
that you know how to deal with it.
If you don't deal with it, it's going to derail you.
Now, the best way to deal with conflict is to be neutral,
to address it head on.
So if something arises, speak to the person one on one
or if it's within a group stop the group and say,
hey guys, let's resolve this.
Let's really hear everybody out.
That becomes really important.
Now I have a story for you.
So my story, and I'm going to because confidentiality
and I still work with all these clients
over all these years.
So I had one client, extremely big organization.
In fact, if I told you the name, you'd all go,
we know that company because they're that big.
And it was starting a new project
and the conflict that I was dealing with
was with an individual,
who definitely felt like she had a personal agenda
and every single time that we were dealing with something,
she'd always kind of throw a wrench in it.
So instead of going with the flow and agreeing,
she may give half-hearted agreements and then afterwards,
go to her manager and cause a lot of ruckus and trouble,
to a point where there was a lot of work.
Like, oh my goodness,
the amount of work just to get everything back on track,
it was unnecessary, in my opinion.
It felt like she had a personal agenda.
Now on her side,
maybe she's just really passionate about something.
So what I did, and this is why I want to share it with you
how to do it as a seasoned professional,
is I actually connected with her and we had one on one,
and we sat down and I said, look so and so,
let's talk about what's going on
and I just really laid it out.
And I found out from her that she was not happy
with the direction we were going,
even though we got our marching orders,
even though they were approved,
and she really felt strongly
that it wasn't the right direction.
And I had to explain to her like, look, I get it.
I appreciate where you're coming from,
but we've already gone through the proper channel.
We did a change control.
I've already got approval from this
and senior executives do not want to change the scope,
so at this particular point, I need you to come on board.
She couldn't, she couldn't do it.
She just literally said, I can't do it, I don't agree.
So I appreciate that.
So what we did instead, is I spoke to her and I said,
"Listen are you okay if we bring your manager in?
"I'll bring in the sponsor
"and let's really talk about whether or not
"this is a right fit for you now."
Because the amount of work that she's doing
and she even admitted it too, like,
all the extra work trying to stop,
in her opinion what needs to go on,
the extra work that I was doing,
the derailing that was happening, wasn't happy for anybody,
and we came to the conclusion that this probably--
Well, not probably, it wasn't the right fit for her.
And as a result, she was put on a different project
and we got a new person to replace her
and it was perfect.
It was the perfect fit.
And that really was something that
because I didn't avoid the conflict, I addressed it,
but done it respectfully,
done it one on one with the person first,
before we bring in other like,
their managers and higher up people to get confirmation,
just shows that you're on top of things.
You can't avoid it.
Because can you imagine working on a project
for the full project, where someone's trying to derail it?
So you really do have to nip this in the bud.
Understand the project life cycles.
In fact, live by the project life cycles
because every project goes through a project life cycle.
Now, if you're asking me, Adriana,
what's a project life cycle?
I got you covered.
Initiation stage it's first one.
Planning is second.
Execution is third.
Monitor and control is fourth,
and the fifth, last but not least, is closing.
Every project goes through those life cycles
and it doesn't matter what methodology you're using
as a project to execute it, they all go through that.
So it's really important that you understand it
because you now need to educate the people on your team,
particularly senior executives
in the beginning of the project.
It is so easy for someone to say to you
and I've had this happen on projects.
In fact, one that I'm working on right now, and it's like,
okay, you got this marching order, go, get it going!
I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
I'm not ready to execute the project yet.
I have to plan, but even more so,
have to talk about initiation and what's an initiation?
I need to finalize a scope statement.
I have to do the priority matrix
and if you're wondering what all that stuff is,
guys don't worry.
Search bar Adriana Girdler put those words in there.
I promise you, I got lots of videos
that you can take a look at to get more info.
But it becomes really important
that you have to educate other people
and you do not move forward until you have that all done.
Because if you don't follow the stages, it will bite you.
Now, the cool thing is with the stages,
when it comes to planning, monitoring, and sorry
execution and monitoring, that is cyclical
and it's reiterative.
So every single time something happens,
you're constantly going back in that circle.
So just take note, follow it,
ensure that you're doing the right things.
If you're wondering Adriana,
I need more information on that.
Good news.
I have a course, Slay Project Management.
Little shameless plug.
Link is below this video.
It actually goes through the cycles
with all of like all those stages, with all the templates,
everything you need in order to be successful.
Stuff that I use actually, on my own projects.
So understanding those life cycles
is just the framework of how projects run,
and that's helped me out tremendously,
whether it's a a huge project or a small project,
they all go through it.
Stay on top of documentation.
With your team be very clear with the expectations
regarding documentation, note taking,
anything that's going to ensure agreements to projects,
ways of working, et cetera.
So now this is a project that I had team members,
who were third party vendors.
So not consultants.
They were actually vendors.
And so I had this one third party,
who was like like a middleman for us, as the client.
So I was kinda like pretending I was a client.
Well, that's the wrong word.
I was working on behalf of the client
and this third party vendor was like the middleman
for another third party manufacturer.
So they were the go-between.
They called a meeting.
It was their meeting.
I have a strict rule.
Hey, when's your meeting, you gotta own it,
facilitate it, take notes on it, the whole nine yards.
We were talking about a lot of important stuff
and I made the assumption that everything
was being taken care of and we presented stuff
and we were told by the third party manufacturer,
no, no, no, we can't do that.
So then when the meeting was over, we asked for,
hey give us a solution.
Three weeks went by and guess what?
They gave us the exact same solution we gave them
that they told us they couldn't do.
I'm like, hey!
So I went to the meeting facilitator,
I said hey, can you bring us those notes?
We need to like, have a meeting and say,
hey this is what we brought to you.
Like we had to do some course correction.
They had none.
I was like, you have to be joking.
You have none?
So as a result, it made it very difficult for us
to show the proof of what was going on
because we didn't have those notes, itself.
So now moving forward, I'm like no way.
I'm very clear with the expectations.
I let everybody know.
In fact, when I go into meetings,
I actually say who's a note taker
and where are you guys keeping your notes.
Please ensure you send them right after the meeting.
I'm not even the facilitator.
It doesn't matter even who is running it.
I say that immediately, because it really ensures
and someone goes, oh shoot, I'm going to do it.
So just be really on top of the documentation
and it's better to document it, type it out,
put it on a Word doc, One Note, whatever it is.
It's going to have more power to it.
Be prepared for risk.
It's quite interesting.
There's two things that people do in projects
that they cancel, which is the most stupidest thing
that they should be canceling.
One is training for the end user.
For some reason, when time is tight,
what's the first thing that people do?
Let's cut the training session.
Are you serious?
These are, the people are going to use it.
You have to train.
The other thing that people do is risk.
Oh, we need to have a risk session.
Of course, we need to have a risk session.
Okay, you build the risk session
and then all of a sudden, oh, we can't attend,
and it gets bump, bump, bump,
up to a point where it doesn't happen.
I'm letting you know, you need to do risk.
I've had a project before, high profile project,
we did a risk session.
I got lots of complaints.
Where are we doing this, blah, blah, blah?
And I said, no, we have to do it, it was a one day event.
Sometimes risk sessions can be painful.
It's like going to the dentist, pulling teeth,
'cause you're literally, just line by line by line.
I have done them to try to make it
a little more interesting, but anyway it is must.
So now project proceeds, everything is fine.
Guess what?
A risk happened.
The risk that we didn't even think was going to happen
but we had a contingency and a mitigation plan for it.
Oh my goodness!
Let me tell you my client, the executives,
they were ecstatic, patting themselves on the back
that they did the risk session.
I'm like, okay, whatever.
If you guys want that go for it.
because it just means our project is successful.
So that's something for sure.
You really need to do the risk.
You can't predict risk and if it comes to fruition
and you don't have anything,
like a contingency or mitigation plan,
it looks bad on you and the finger will be pointed at you.
So even if you just do with a few group
of people or even it's just yourself
so that you have it as a project plan and as a backup.
Worth it, worth it.
Learn from the past.
Please, please learn from the past.
Don't do things in the past and then repeat them again.
Okay, so what do I mean by this?
When we learn from the past,
we know exactly it is what we want to do
and that's only additional information.
In fact, as project managers,
we do lessons learned all the time.
Postmortems, after action reviews,
whatever you wanna call them.
In fact, I have a video on lessons learned.
You can go search for Adriana and lessons learned
and you'll find it to get more information on that.
But here's how I now use lessons learned
to help me be successful in future projects.
So I had this other client, again,
these are all real clients,
and it was again a big, big organization, global mandate,
and this particular individual brought me on.
He wanted to,
he was overseeing this customer centric project,
which actually was really, really cool,
and he was bringing me on to be a consultant for him
and to also execute on some project management stuff.
So he himself, was not a project manager
and it was a really big project and needed project managing.
So brought me in.
We were, I was like his right hand.
So there were times as we were doing this,
I just assumed...
See and that's the problem.
I assumed he would listen
to all the advice I was giving him.
But what actually happened is there were a lot of times
when he would make a decision I'd be like, don't do it,
it's the wrong thing.
It's going to create confusion.
There's too much going on.
He chose to do it anyway.
So what I found in the end,
is that because of that, that particular project
didn't have really a high success rate.
I didn't even have much control over what was going on,
'cause individually, it was this person.
So what I now do, is I am very clear with all my clients.
When I tell you no to something
there's really good reason why.
I need you to follow through and if not,
we need to document it, trace it,
we need to bring it high up.
So I have now these rules in place to ensure,
but I really listened to the lessons learned.
I don't make the same mistake twice
because when you get burned, you have to learn from it.
And so for sure, for sure,
focus on those lessons learned and learn from it.
It's valuable, whether it's a good value, not a good value,
whether it's a good experience or a bad experience,
it is something to take note of.
It's it's going to make you better
and it's going to ensure more success in your future.
Yay!
You've made it to the end and just like I said
in the beginning, I have that free webinar for you.
I highly recommend you go under this video
to the link for that free webinar,
project management, all the top five things
you need to know.
That's just going to make you
a really awesome project manager.
On that note, thanks for watching.
See you in the next video.