STEP 1
What Do You Want to Achieve? Create Your Vision and Mission Statement

Knowing what you want to achieve is the first step in becoming as successful as possible. Only when you know what you are aiming for can you reach your goals and fulfill your ambitions.

The subconscious mind works to achieve the things that you think about most of the time, whether you want them or not. This is why I encourage you to switch your thinking away from what you do not want to what you do want.

The first part of this workbook, Step 1, is designed to make you think about what kind of project manager you want to become. Which qualities would you like to be known for, and what would you like to achieve in your career as a project manager? How do you define success, and what does excellence look like to you? There are many ways of achieving excellence, but you are the only one who can determine what it means to you.

I will guide you through a number of insightful questions that relate to your personal characteristics and to your behavior as a project manager. I will also ask you to write a vision and mission statement that encapsulates who and what you would like to be, do, and have. The vision and mission statement becomes your beacon and measure of success.

After completing Step 1 you will know what your strengths and challenges are as a project manager, what your goals are and what success means to you. A discussion of specific project management tips, tools, and techniques will follow shortly. But first we need to know a bit about who you are and what you want to achieve in your career as a project manager.

WHAT IS PROJECT MANAGEMENT?

Project management is about establishing what is in scope and out of scope of a project and subsequently organizing and managing resources in such a way that specific goals and objectives are achieved within a certain set of criteria.

Project management is the art and science of making a project’s vision come alive and getting things done—more so than determining what the vision itself is. Of course, there will be no project without a vision and clear objectives, but determining the “why and what” of a project is more a concern for the customer or change manager than for the project manager.

You could say that change management provides the project’s vision and is concerned with the human impact of change, whereas project management is related to how that vision is executed. These two disciplines go hand in hand and are both concerned with the transformation process between a present and a future state. The more experienced you become, the more likely it is that you will take on the role of a change manager in addition to your role as project manager.

Project management involves many different types of activities that all serve the purpose of ensuring that the project’s vision is executed and turned into reality within certain time, quality, and budget constraints. These activities relate to planning and coordinating tasks and to directing and supervising people. Scope and deliverables need to be specified, estimated, and executed, and quality must be assured. Risks, issues, and change requests need to be effectively managed, and a significant amount of time needs to be spent liaising with stakeholders and ensuring that the team remains focused and motivated.

In accordance with the philosophy that you manage tasks and lead people, it could be argued that project management contains an equal number of management and leadership activities. On that basis, we could go on to define project management as:

To become a highly valued and truly successful project management leader, you need to be an excellent manager as well as a good leader. You must be able to access and make use of both skill sets, depending on the immediate need and the situation to which you are responding. In addition, you must be excellent at managing your time and consistently focus on the right activities. Some of the activities you engage in are essential to the dynamics and ongoing progress of the project and must be completed by you. Others are less important and could potentially be delegated to someone else.

Doing something very well that does not need to be done at all is a poor use of time. Before starting any activity, check how important it is to the overall success of the project or to the functioning of the team. Aim to always focus on the highest-value activities and delegate or defer the others. The tasks and activities that matter the most must never be at the mercy of the tasks and activities that matter the least.

MANAGEMENT VS. LEADERSHIP

The concepts of management and leadership are recurring themes throughout this workbook. I have chosen to use the word management to describe anything that relates to the control and direction of tasks, events, and processes, and leadership for anything that relates to the control and direction of people. On that basis, leadership and management encompass different but overlapping elements. It is possible to be good at one but not the other. It is, however, also possible to be good at both disciplines at the same time.

As a manager, you are typically involved in scheduling work, delegating tasks, coordinating effort and resources, monitoring and guiding progress, building teams, and appealing to rational thinking. As a leader, however, your role is to inspire people, explain goals, share the vision, provide focus, be a role model, monitor morale, create a positive team feeling, and unleash potential.

Field Marshal William Slim elegantly explained the difference between leadership and management in the following way: “Leadership is of the spirit, compounded of personality and vision. Its practice is an art. Management is of the mind, more a matter of accurate calculations, statistics, methods, timetables, and routine. Its practice is a science”.

One of the biggest differences between managers and leaders is the way they motivate people who work for them. Managers are in a position of authority, and their subordinates largely do as they are told because they get a reward (or a salary) for doing so. Leaders see their role quite differently and typically offer more creative opportunities when it comes to motivating staff. Leaders focus on inspiring people and on giving credit to others. They focus on the overall vision and end goal and on how they can best engage and serve others so that they in turn feel inspired and motivated to contribute to the vision.

Many associate the word leader with a particular role, such as the CEO of a major company. But leadership is not a function of what you do or what your job title is; rather, it is a function of your personal capabilities. Leaders can be found in many guises and in all walks of life; many parents, for instance, are leaders.

We will be examining the concept of leadership throughout this workbook and will assess what you can do to actively incorporate some of the most important qualities of leadership into the way you interact with your team and project stakeholders.

WHAT IS A GOOD PROJECT MANAGER?

Managing projects requires a great deal of effort, skill, and finesse. As a project manager, you are expected to engage with a big-picture vision and make a certain promise to execute it and turn it into reality within certain time, quality, and budget constraints. This requires thoughtful consideration and a great deal of skill and personal leadership. It requires you to fully understand the vision, scope, and constraints of the project and to continually work to remove blockages. You must consistently spend time on those things that matter the most to the success of the project, and you must focus on people as much as you focus on tasks.

There are as many ways of executing a project as there are people. We all have different ways of doing things, and we experience different degrees of success in what we do. Yet some people stand out from the crowd. They seem to have a different mindset and tend to succeed at most things they venture into. That is not to say that they do not fail, because they do. What matters is that they have the drive, confidence, and attitude to keep going and to turn failure into key learning points which will eventually help them succeed. They have a winning mentality, and they set a great example for others to follow.

When you come across a person who has a winning mentality and whom you admire, it may be because you feel that you lack some of what he has. You admire him for having a particular skill that you would love to have. If you are searching for guidance on what you can do to enhance your own career, a natural first step is to look at people who inspire you.

ROLE MODELS

Role models can play an important part in your ongoing development. But when you look to people you admire, be careful not to put yourself down or say that you can never be as good as them. Each of us has unique qualities, and each of us is at a different stage in our personal and professional development. Even your role models are in many ways still students who continue to learn and grow.

Use your role models as a compass for the direction in which you want to go. Take a close look at their best qualities and ask yourself how you can incorporate some of them into your own personality and behavior. Visualize the person you would like to be, then act as if you are already that person. When you can imagine it, you can do it!

When I looked at my own role models and what I admired about them, I found that I was particularly inspired by people who remained calm during times of conflict and pressure and who always managed to keep their teams focused on the end goal. When I became aware of this, I examined myself more closely. I found that I was very task-oriented and at times very reactive. I wanted to become more visionary, calm, and measured in my responses to challenging situations.

When I realized this, I began to identify situations where I could proactively make a change. I visualized how I wanted to behave, and I imagined what I would say and do in particular situations. I also asked myself hypothetical questions such as, “What would the head of the department do in this situation? What would my role model advise me to do?” I found that this technique made it easier for me to actually make a change.

IDENTIFY YOUR STRENGTHS

We all have strengths, unique talents, and abilities that set us apart from others. Your strengths are your most powerful skills and attributes and your best tools for accomplishment. They illustrate what you do really well and how you differentiate yourself from others.

When you play to your strengths, you create a positive situation for yourself and for the project, and all parties benefit. The project and people around you benefit from your expertise and positive energy, and you benefit from feeling good, being in control, and being in your flow.

When you do the things you are good at, you have an opportunity to shine, and you are more likely to be of value and a source of inspiration to people around you. Your confidence naturally grows, and you feel successful, calm, and resourceful.

Consider the following questions about the strengths and abilities that you contribute to project management.

IDENTIFY YOUR PROJECT MANAGEMENT CHALLENGES

Your beliefs about the world and yourself have a powerful effect on your behavior as a project manager. The way you think determines everything you say, do, believe, and feel. If you want to change the way you do things and the way you deal with challenges, you first have to change the way you think about things. Any improvement you desire on the outside as a project manager begins with improvements on the inside. When you change your inner world, you will notice that your external world changes too.

One of the differences between ordinary and successful people is that successful people do not give up when presented with an obstacle or a challenge. They pick themselves up, get to the root cause of the issue, and change their approach accordingly. Successful people come across as many roadblocks as everyone else, but instead of giving in and blaming others, they change their approach and do something about the situation. They are proactive and keep trying new ways.

IDENTIFY YOUR LIMITING FACTOR

In almost everything you do, a single factor sets the speed at which you achieve your goals or complete a job. This factor is a constraint that determines how effectively you manage yourself and others and how successful you are at achieving a specific outcome.

To put it another way, we could say that your performance is determined by your potential, less interference. This interference could be a limiting thought, an unhelpful behavior, or any external influences or distractions that have a negative impact on your focus and ability to perform an activity.

Many people are limited by a negative self-image and hold themselves back unnecessarily because they do not believe in their own abilities. If this rings true for you, you need to come to an understanding of what you have learned to think and believe about yourself so that you can unwind any negative thought patterns and start thinking and behaving in new ways.

To improve your performance and unleash your potential, you must identify and remove your limiting factor and limiting beliefs. Focus on what it is that interferes with your abilities and prevents you from performing at your best. When you take action at that level, you address the root cause of some of your biggest challenges.

Identifying your limiting factor and reducing interference could be the one of the most important actions you take on your road to success.

WRITE YOUR VISION AND MISSION STATEMENT

Formulating a personal vision and mission statement for your project management practice is an important step in becoming more successful at what you do because it articulates your aspirations and ambitions. A vision and mission statement expresses, in just one paragraph, who you want to be and what you want to do and have as a project manager. It also functions as a measure of your success in reaching those goals. If you have a vision and mission statement, it is much easier for you to direct your development plan and understand which capabilities you must strive to enhance and which behaviors you need to change.

A vision and mission statement should reflect your values, vision, goals, and purpose. It is really important that you feel excited and inspired by it. When you read it aloud, it should make you feel good and compelled to live by it.

EXAMPLES OF VISION AND MISSION STATEMENTS

“My vision is to live each day to the fullest and to treat others with the same respect I deserve myself. I look for strengths in others and the good in every situation. I grow stronger with each accomplishment, and even stronger with each setback. My mission and ultimate goal is to pass on these values to my family and to everyone I work with.”

“The project manager I choose to be is someone who lives life honestly and compassionately, and who inspires and motivates others to deliver remarkable projects with the philosophy that everything is possible.”

“My vision is to be honest and empathetic towards others and to build my reputation based on performance. I am committed to growing as a leader by learning from those with more experience than myself and to champion others to grow personally and professionally. My mission is to create and lead a dream team where everyone is playing to their strengths in order to deliver value-added projects that provide the end users with a superior experience.”

“I am calm and resourceful in everything that I do. I listen, I observe, and I make effective decisions. I build strong and trusting relationships and I put pride in being open, honest, and proactive. I choose to filter out negative and pessimistic views and strive to show strength during adversity. I find support and balance inside myself. My pleasure comes from seeing my team thrive and succeed in the delivery of great projects to a satisfied customer.”