Vision, Values, and Goals go together, especially when it comes to shared business goals. Set goals that are achievable and measurable from week to week, month to month, quarter to quarter, and year to year (not much longer than that because things can vastly change in 6-12 months time). Your organization might write out a 15-20 page Business Plan at first, but it will likely focus on adjusting a smaller 3-5 page Action Plan one year at a time after that. You can progress your individual career, team, and organizational business goals in similar ways project by project. Best practices of project management gives you your best chance at achieving shared goals.

Know Your Goals & Requirements

The average person does not have a great track record with achieving goals. We start out strong, but a few months in we can’t keep it up. The main problems are that we either are not clear enough about what we want to achieve by when and measure progress to keep up the momentum, or we overestimate our ability and take on more than we can handle too early rather than building up to a sustainable pace. Be sure your team knows the success criteria, the milestones, and the methodology for working together to reach your desired new state of being in Scope and as expected. Learn what requirements and key performance indicators you have to reach to realize your business goals and then organize your project management time, resources, and costs.

Know Your Course of Action

As individuals we are prone to jump right in without having a clear end in mind, without charting the course, planning and outlining and breaking down the work, and without assigning reasonable durations, executing to a schedule that progresses toward our goals with incremental gains, and without monitoring and controlling our efforts to make sure we are on track with key measurables or need to adjust.

To reach your business goals in your career, in your teams, and in your organizations you will need to advance how you pursue business improvements. The more people involved in shared goals the more collaboration, coordination, and communication needed, the larger the possibilities, but the greater the risk at failed outcomes. One of the main reasons I like project management is because it is the best way I know of to achieve goals, especially shared goals where everyone must be on the same page working in symphony with one another.

Organizational Project Goals

Organizational Project Management takes care to have the right people in the right place at the right time. When it comes to setting up Organizational Goals it can be done in many different ways, but corporate change initiatives require some form of professional project management touching each level of the organization. Project Management and Company Goals are tied at the hip so-to-speak.

I have observed Executive Teams who successfully met in the boardroom behind closed doors to set up goals for the organization, but either could not get the culture overall on board or didn’t even try to. They struggled in the details to implement group projects from their lofty vantage points. The top down approach is necessary when only the leadership in the company has visibility to the landscape and what’s ahead for setting goals. Besides, sometimes sensitive information like finances need to be held confidential. The problem is that executives have no time for mid or low level work and things get missed. Turns out executives usually don’t really know the ins and outs of everyone else’s jobs. They also assume everyone else knows and can enact teamwork without them. Project management takes the expertise of a middle man and it is a full-time responsibility you can’t afford to waste an executive’s wage on or even a functional manager’s time on as they attempt to figure out the intricacies of project work on shared cross-functional change goals.

I have observed Executive Teams who successfully used market and business case studies combined with input from cross-functional focus groups to setup goals for the organization, but struggled to know when, how, and what form project management should take to orchestrate it. The middle man approach is the best. The problem is most organizations assign projects to functional managers on top of everything else they are doing and things get dropped. They try to hold people accountable with meetings. Professional Project Management connects the top of the organization with the bottom of the organization and experts side by side throughout the organization. The best form of project management has a Sponsor, a Project Manager, and a Project Team who are all well versed in your organization’s brand of project management. They know what’s up and they work together seamlessly. I have yet to find a project team that is not a little dysfunctional, but teams that are led by a Professional Project Manager and supported by a Project Management Office are the highest functioning and most likely to succeed.

I have observed Executive Teams who successfully allowed the company employees as a whole to setup goals for the organization, but then self-forming teams struggled to implement meaningful projects using the same group approach. The bottom up approach is good for cultures that need strong buy in from everyone and can work for well-established industries that change slowly. The problem is that things get stuck and everyone thinks the other person is moving things along. No one actually takes the lead or follows well when the actual work needs to be done and results need to be achieved. It gets too difficult for the masses to agree on the best course of action, to fine tune the plans, and then no one knows who to turn to for an authoritative solutions beyond their scope when problems arise. Autonomous teams sounds good, until they have to lead a project along without any clear structure, frameworks or methodologies, and without exercising any real expertise in project management. Project management can be learned on the job fortunately and a little training to your leadership team, your project and functional management teams, and your specialist teams can go a long way.

Ideally an organization will progress to having a fully functioning PMO, but as long as it sets up and supports some form of project management structure that supports the 3 levels of business, it will be in a great position to grow its business and its project management structure, abilities, and efforts toward greater shared future goals. It’s something to aim for. It is more than worth the investment as resources allow. Your business goals will benefit tremendously if you can get to that level.

Progress Your Business Goals

Progress your business goals by progressing your project management capabilities. You don’t have to accomplish your goals for successful project management all at once. You can learn as you go, but just like outline a book, if you outline your business story to include continually improving your project management abilities as an organization project by project you can improve your business maturity and your project management maturity level by level. More to come on that in a future newsletter.

Storyboard PM Solution

I founded Storyboard PM to integrate organizational project management as a business solution that gets and keeps our business teams on the same page to progress our work together.

Let’s lift organizational and project management maturity from one level to the next on the way to realizing our Values as successful individuals, teams, and organizations.