Dan Martell - March 27, 2023


Manage Projects Like a Pro

Topics
project file structure & success criteria project file management
Hosted by
Dan Martell
Why most new entrepreneurs fail ❌ Movement is medicine 💊

Episode Stats


Length

12 minutes

Words per minute

195.83

Word count

2,452

Sentence count

27


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

If you struggle with project management, getting things done, and moving your team forward to outcomes, I m going to share with you the three very different unique perspectives I have that I ve learned from being coached and trained from some of the best project managers in the world.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 If you struggle with project management, getting things done, moving your team forward to outcomes,
00:00:06.340 I'm going to share with you the three very different unique perspectives I have that I've
00:00:11.180 learned from being coached and trained from some of the best project managers in the world
00:00:15.220 to building and managing not only companies, but projects and OKRs and strategies. I mean,
00:00:21.220 you name the management strategy out there to try to get more done with your team. I've read it,
00:00:27.340 I've consumed it, but what I'm going to share with you today is a completely different perspective
00:00:32.700 to simplify it, to look for the minimum effective dose, not try to boil the ocean, but what
00:00:38.380 are the three moves that I feel if you guys add that's probably missing from your execution
00:00:45.100 today will have the biggest impact on your projects and getting things done?
00:00:49.980 Let's get into it.
00:00:52.120 The one thing you will quickly learn from me if I'm managing a project and you're part
00:00:56.560 that team is that i like to grab everything and put it into what i call a project file and it is
00:01:02.240 not complicated some of you guys want to talk about asana and trello and the toolings which is
00:01:06.560 great but what i want to encourage you to do is consider just dumping everything into a project
00:01:13.120 file to be able to start playing with it to work with it so what's unique is the way i structure
00:01:19.120 that project file there's three specific elements that make it different the way i look at projects
00:01:25.200 that you may be missing right now in your process number one is the success criteria i'm a big fan
00:01:32.000 of asking people when this is successful let's list out the four to six different areas that
00:01:39.040 we'll know have improved measurable impact in the business or in your life that's gonna decide if
00:01:46.640 this project has been successful what are the success criterias that we're gonna list out so
00:01:52.400 that we all know that as especially if you have multiple team members you got three people on a
00:01:56.960 project you got 20 people on a project you need to make sure everybody's rowing the boat in the
00:02:01.280 same direction they're pulling on the rope in the same direction and the only way to ensure that is
00:02:06.400 to get on the same page for the specific success criterias of the project that's number one number
00:02:12.400 two is that you define the measurement what are the leading indicators what are the activities
00:02:19.680 what are we gonna agree upon daily weekly monthly that we're gonna measure as a team and review
00:02:27.920 to let us know we're making progress towards the outcome the success criteria because oftentimes
00:02:33.440 what i've discovered and i was just on a project meeting people get really excited about like
00:02:38.960 moving things forward and creating and like pushing the boulder up the mountain you know
00:02:43.520 this like starts as a little snowball and they keep building it and building it and it becomes
00:02:48.240 harder but the closer they get to the top the more they get excited and get this bolder but what i
00:02:53.200 want to do is slow things down and say hey how are we going to know we're making the right progress
00:02:59.120 in the right direction what data what activities and and can we all agree what ours are going to be
00:03:05.680 somebody it might be you know sending 25 emails per day every day for the next two months right
00:03:11.520 and that's their contribution to the project somebody else it might be like meeting with
00:03:15.760 with the team every morning for 15 minutes
00:03:17.980 to do a standup and say, what did you do yesterday?
00:03:19.980 What are you doing today?
00:03:21.160 And are you stuck, right?
00:03:22.300 So like, and then just measuring that, it sounds crazy,
00:03:25.080 but I literally create a spreadsheet
00:03:27.040 and I link it in the project file.
00:03:28.880 Right now our teams are so big,
00:03:30.160 they're using like fancy data,
00:03:31.960 data tools and analytics and, you know,
00:03:34.440 air tables and all these tools,
00:03:35.740 but I like to keep it simple.
00:03:37.080 I like to break it down and say,
00:03:38.720 let's just define what we're gonna measure as a team,
00:03:41.940 every person on this team that we're going to review
00:03:45.600 once a week, ideally it's an activity, it's an initiative,
00:03:48.720 and these are leading indicators to the final outcome
00:03:51.980 that we all get on the same page on.
00:03:53.980 And if we do that and we measure it,
00:03:56.000 it becomes inevitable that you will succeed
00:03:59.320 if you're willing to measure and report back.
00:04:02.360 So that is a huge area that most people miss
00:04:04.360 and it's part of the project file.
00:04:06.100 The third aspect of the project file
00:04:07.560 that I think is unique is I like to collect everything
00:04:11.860 that might exist, resources, strategies, images.
00:04:16.000 I literally just got a call with my sales team
00:04:18.100 and they've got this process that they call sell by chat.
00:04:21.580 So essentially our sales team is chatting
00:04:24.440 through our sales inbox and other different platforms
00:04:27.480 with potential buyers all the time.
00:04:30.480 And a new person took over and they started creating an SOP,
00:04:34.020 the standard operating procedure.
00:04:35.720 And I stopped them and I said,
00:04:37.320 have you collected all of this stuff?
00:04:39.900 you collected all of the different resources that exist to define this process that you're going to
00:04:46.380 go create this project that you're initiating and they were like no and i go hey why don't we start
00:04:52.060 with this and i and i tell you even like i have a lot of clients that outsource you know to marketing
00:04:57.260 agencies to sales agencies to uh productivity agencies operation agencies and the thing that
00:05:03.900 they miss is literally just looking side of their company and collecting not only stuff they've
00:05:09.420 created but even external resources that they like you know i was on another call with my coo
00:05:14.940 and we were talking about building a calendar because our team is huge now of everybody's
00:05:21.500 time off because what's happening now is that there's projects they need to execute and there's
00:05:26.060 certain people that are not in the loop and there's dependencies depending on timelines
00:05:29.580 and events that people need to be aware of just like one page where the executive leadership team
00:05:34.220 the senior leadership team can see everybody's time off so that we can see opportunities to
00:05:39.820 improve and all i did is i went online to google images and i searched for examples of calendars
00:05:46.540 one page team calendars and i went through it until i found one template that i liked and i
00:05:52.140 said this this is what it's supposed to look like i share that because if you take the internal
00:05:57.100 resources and you take literally 15 minutes to research external resources and you link them
00:06:03.020 all up in the project file so that every new person that might be added to the project or you
00:06:08.140 have this open when you're doing your project meetings reviews it and is aware and they know
00:06:12.620 where it is and it's easy accessible it will change the game for how you manage projects
00:06:17.820 the one thing stopping project teams from being successful is they don't create a cadence for
00:06:23.500 success and i like to use a framework that i've created called the weekly sync it doesn't matter
00:06:28.780 what project you're working on today if you want to achieve an outcome you have to ask yourself
00:06:33.820 what is the rhythm of success how often are we going to look at our activities and our numbers
00:06:39.260 and our progress and what is the right frequency for doing that is it daily is it weekly is it
00:06:44.220 monthly but at minimum if you are working on a project that is meaningful for me my book launch
00:06:50.140 i was dedicated to making sure this thing was a bestseller and i and i sat down and i said to the
00:06:55.660 team what's the rhythm we need to adhere to now you know i'm technically the talent i had a book
00:07:01.100 launch team and a book ceo and everything i really wanted to show up and support i'm also running
00:07:05.980 another company sas academy and the book itself is almost like birthing it's a new business a new
00:07:10.860 startup and we set on the weekly sync structure and the key is is like defining up front what is
00:07:17.500 the agenda so at minimum these are the three things that always show up on a weekly sync
00:07:22.860 the first one is a link to the project file and an update and review of everybody's progress so
00:07:28.780 in the project file you should have broken down kind of the key projects and sequencing and
00:07:32.540 timelines having that open to just get everybody to report back on hey bob you're working on this
00:07:38.700 project how you doing jane you're working on this project how you doing like getting them to give a
00:07:43.100 red green yellow status report here's the timeline make sure there's dates there are you on track
00:07:48.300 that is the first thing that we start with number two is the metrics the measurement and i always
00:07:53.500 call it the leading metrics to the outcome what are the numbers that we're going to measure that's
00:07:59.740 going to get us this specific outcome and how are we doing are we red green or yellow these are
00:08:05.180 quantitative measurements so that we know if somebody is on track the third thing is a list
00:08:11.420 of discussions now here's where most people fail in the discussions is i expect throughout the week
00:08:17.740 between our meetings that my team is adding stuff to the discussion so i know if that's not been the
00:08:23.740 case if i show up to the meeting and in the discussion it's just a public google doc that
00:08:28.860 if they do not have any new items listed under discussions because what i'm looking for is
00:08:34.300 people that are executing projects seeing friction seeing challenges not getting responses and saying
00:08:39.260 hey we got to solve that problem i'm going to add it to the list because what happens in most
00:08:42.780 project teams is you get on there and say does anybody have any discussions and they're like
00:08:46.140 nope everything is good i have nothing to review and then you're like well why didn't you get this
00:08:52.380 done oh you know what last week i was waiting on jane but she was on vacation huh should we talk
00:08:57.980 about vacation schedules because that would be a great discussion to have so to me if i don't see
00:09:03.260 before the meeting in the agenda of the weekly sync under discussions new items added by the team
00:09:08.860 that is part of that project then i know they're not using the document the way they need to be
00:09:13.420 and it has to be solved one of the biggest pet peeves that i have is when i can't find the thing
00:09:20.300 that i know exists so what i've done when it comes to project management is i created this
00:09:25.580 rule all people that work on a team with me know this rule it's called linkability and the rule is
00:09:31.420 very simple if you have the document the project file the hub spot form whatever you're working on
00:09:39.660 if you have it open and then you email anybody for advice or feedback or you post a slack message
00:09:46.220 you have to include the link it might sound small but i will tell you from experience if any time
00:09:53.260 you talk about an asset you include the link to your dropbox location to another slack thread even
00:10:00.540 you will increase the project team's velocity
00:10:04.280 by just making things linkable.
00:10:07.000 Again, some of you might be like, this sounds so basic.
00:10:09.780 I will tell you, when I was building companies
00:10:12.400 in the early days and we didn't have
00:10:13.960 all these online kind of cloud tools,
00:10:16.480 like having a process for when we document
00:10:20.120 or we talk about things in email to link to the final place
00:10:24.380 or at least mention where it's located
00:10:26.400 because literally people will be like,
00:10:27.920 yeah, I just reviewed the project file
00:10:29.360 didn't find this this and this and then there's an email that's sent out to the whole team and
00:10:33.360 you're wondering well where is that project file like you you had it open you didn't attach it you
00:10:39.440 didn't link it and everybody else is like well i want to look at it maybe i can help you maybe i
00:10:43.840 can see within there you know where it could be in that section and it's so interesting to have
00:10:49.760 especially new team members that are kind of new to communication processes and like team
00:10:54.560 collaboration that linkability linking up the thing is not part of it so for me it's part of
00:11:00.080 our communication guidelines it's part of our project management rhythms and it's a non-negotiable
00:11:05.200 and i usually just reply to somebody that's forgotten to do it and i go linkability question
00:11:09.360 mark and they're like oh yes i need to make this linkable because sometimes they'll have something
00:11:13.840 on their computer and they haven't put it up in a shared folder to make it linkable and that's step
00:11:18.880 one and then they can link it to the email to the slack post to the project management software
00:11:22.880 or wherever they're talking about it
00:11:24.560 to make it really easy for everybody else
00:11:26.540 to be aware and collaborate.
00:11:28.220 So if you wanna level up your project management skills
00:11:31.700 and to be able to tackle not only $10,000 projects,
00:11:35.500 but $100,000 projects,
00:11:36.960 and maybe someday million to $10 million projects,
00:11:40.040 then you need to perfect these three areas.
00:11:42.640 You need to focus on the project file
00:11:45.440 so you collect everything and you put it into one place.
00:11:48.080 Then you gotta get really clear about the weekly sync
00:11:51.000 and what is the agenda that we're gonna go through
00:11:54.520 to prompt the review to know that everybody is on track,
00:11:58.200 what's that cadence look like,
00:11:59.600 and then finally get everybody to agree to linkability
00:12:02.640 so that all the communication around the project
00:12:05.360 is moving forward as fast as humanly possible
00:12:08.120 to get to that outcome and make it impossible
00:12:11.140 that you don't hit your goal.
00:12:12.540 To help you guys take your project management skill
00:12:14.660 to another level, I've actually pulled out
00:12:16.940 our internal template for a project file,
00:12:19.360 And it includes a bunch of different sections
00:12:21.480 you may have never seen as it pertains
00:12:23.360 to project management to help you execute even better.
00:12:26.240 So click the link below to download your copy.
00:12:28.880 I hope this finds you awesome.
00:12:30.160 See you in the next video.