ISSUE #12

Welcome to the + 2 newsletter from The PPM Academy

Each month, I’ll send you two quick and simple approaches to improve your Productivity and Project Management that you can try, test, and adapt to work and everyday life.

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Creating a project team charter can help align remote, hybrid, or office-based teams and foster a supportive and collaborative environment. Check out this month’s Project Management Tip for more information. 1 minute, 27 seconds reading time.

Goal setting doesn’t have to be a big yearly thing, like around New Year’s. This month’s Productivity Tip introduces the 1-4-1 goal-setting approach, which provides direction for each month, week, and day, so you can always focus on high-value work. 1 minute 9 seconds reading time.

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Project Management Tip: The Team Charter

A team charter aligns your project team on their values and how they want to communicate, work together and support each other.

If the team works in different ways or has other ideas or understanding of what you must achieve, you won’t reach the outcome you’re trying to get on your project.

Or if you do, it will take a lot of work to get there.

Without team alignment through a team charter, when you come together to collaborate, it will be hard work as the team members have been working in these invisible silos, so your meetings are likely to be unproductive and not very enjoyable in some cases.

The team charter aligns the project team on how you want to work together and can be created by using something as simple as an A1 board or, when working remotely, a Google Doc, or a digital canvas using a tool like Mural.

You define what’s important as a team so that it could be statements like:

• We always take pride in your work
• We don’t blame each other for mistakes; we only learn and support each other
• For any emails sent after 18.00, you should not expect a response back until the next day

By creating these rules or guidelines as a team upfront, you make sure you’re all aligned as a team from the start.

Team collaboration will improve, and when you have tough times on the project, you’ll already be closer as a team and more likely to support each other and get to a solution faster.

Productivity Tip: The 1-4-1 Goal setting approach

The 1-4-1 is a short-term goal-setting approach to keep you focused throughout the month on high-value work and one thing at a time.

But even setting a monthly goal can be daunting and sometimes does not seem achievable, but breaking it down immediately simplifies it and gives you focus. ⁠⁠

So the first step is to set one monthly goal. Make it challenging but achievable to keep you interested.

Then break down the monthly goal into four goals, so one each week will help you achieve the monthly goal.

Next, you take the goal for the immediate week, and each day, set one goal that will move you closer to achieving the weekly goal and, ultimately, the monthly goal. ⁠⁠ The daily goals you set are all about momentum. Doing a little every day keeps you moving towards the bigger goal.

It also keeps you focused on one task, as 28% of the working day is lost to task switching, so the more you can stay focused on one thing, the more you’ll achieve. ⁠⁠ Try it, and you’ll be surprised how much you can achieve in a month, and before you know it, you’ll be setting bigger and more impactful goals. ⁠⁠

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PS: If you like these tips, did you know I have a programme where I develop PMs on their Project Management skills, Productivity and Mindset to become high-performing Project Managers and Leaders? You can book a free discovery call here to learn more about working with me.​

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