It might seem odd, to apply program management to our personal goals.
When I first thought of this, I thought it strange also. But when I considered it more deeply, I realised how impactful it could be.
So often we aim to keep our work and personal lives separate.
Our work can contain formality. Formality in our personal lives can feel constraining. So much so, that we might resist applying concepts from our professional training to how we structure our lives as individuals.
I’ve been fortunate to be involved in hundreds of projects. Some of these I’ve contributed to and others I’ve led from the start.
The discipline of program / project management exists to ensure that initiatives are well-run and successful. I started to think, why don’t we borrow from these disciplines to improve our own personal planning? The more I thought about it, the more I realised how much could be gained from this approach.
In this article I share 6 essential activities from program management which can have immeasurable value in how we plan our ambitions in any given year.
1. Articulate your vision / objective
A great project clearly sets its vision for change.
Whether that’s an elevator pitch, a lean canvas or objectives and key results, being able say ‘why something is important’ is an ingredient for the project’s success.
In your own pursuits, think about the vision / ambition you aspire to.
Is it clearly articulated? Is it something that you share with others? Does it inspire you?
By building a clear ambition for where we wish to go, we create a reference point for us to target.
As a starting point you can take inspiration from the mission and vision statements of the world’s best companies. You might also consider the attributes that make a vision statement last.
2. Understand your capacity
Have you ever been involved in a project where all of the people working on it had a hundred other priorities?
Many projects fail because the team members involved in them are stretched too thin.
By contrast, other projects succeed where people involved in the work have not only enough time to get the work done, but also time to contribute to building the positive culture needed for the project’s success.
In work situations, we often think about our capacity. But we don’t naturally think of whether we’re over or under capacity for our personal goals. Often we approach these with the perspective of ‘we’ll just fit things in’. At the same time, planning our own capacity is one of the best methods available to manage our level of resilience.
Taking a more formal planning approach to whether we have enough capacity in our personal lives can be a powerful exercise.
It can remind us to focus on what is most important and avoid over expending ourselves, which can result in both burn out and missed goals.
3. Clarify where your effort creates impact
During the early stages of a project, teams focus on where to spend their time.
They do this by asking ‘what is most important’?
A simple way to do this is to respond to two easy questions:
- how much effort will this activity require; and
- how much impact/value will our effort produce?
Items with low effort and high impact are clear areas to prioritize to realise the greatest gains.
Applying this same technique to our personal planning will give us a view of what’s most important.
For example, how would you rate 1 hour spent with family vs social media on the effort / impact matrix?
I have to say, I love and hate this exercise!
It forces me to think about the activities where I spend my time.
I love that it shows me what is most impactful. I hate (but secretly relish) how beautifully simple it is, showing me where I’m spending time on things that have little impact.
4. Build a roadmap for your year
Someone smart once said “a goal without a plan is just a wish.” (it was Antoine de Saint-Exupéry).
Successful projects and companies have a roadmap.
This might be expressed at a very high level (quarters, milestones) or at a detailed level, in the form of a project plan (tasks, subtasks).
The lesson is simple – if we don’t articulate our aspiration and translate this to milestones and dates, we will not truly know what we’re targeting.
So if we have goals for ourselves in any year, why not build these into a roadmap?
Want to do some specific professional development? How about going on that family holiday you’ve been dreaming of? Maybe even you want to change jobs?
Put it on your roadmap.
Look at it regularly and think about the activities that support these goals.
5. Identify your stakeholders
In projects, we identify the stakeholders that are important to realising an outcome.
We ask “who would have a stake – positive, negative or neutral – in the fulfilment of these goals.”
By understanding these groups, we know who we have to speak with in order to build a relationship between those people and the work.
Stakeholders sounds like a very formal term. Beneath this, we are really talking about relationships. And, the relationships that exist between people, projects and things.
In our personal lives, the same concept is important.
We have groups that we interact with. Families, friends, acquaintances. We have people in our professional network. Often, we also have organizations that are important to our happiness – the local swimming pool, schools our children attend or the non-profit groups whose cause we wish to support.
All of these stakeholders play a role, some less and some more, to our goals.
Often we don’t consider these groups in detail. When this occurs, we run the risk of the year running away and we may have missed our opportunity to invest our time and energy in the right groups.
While it might seem formal, the concept of identifying and investing in our stakeholders, is actually one that can help a great deal with our happiness.
6. Clarify the cost of ‘no action’
Great projects start with a business case.
A strong business case clarifies the cost of a project, the benefits the project will realise and, equally important, the cost of ‘inaction’.
Doing nothing always comes with a cost.
This is the opportunity cost. What will we miss out on by not acting? What is the probable future of continuing on our current path, without any intervention?
In our personal lives, there are also costs of inaction, but we don’t always take the time to consider them.
If we don’t do that important training, will it make us less prepared for the job that we want? If we don’t attend to our finances, will that leave us in a weaker position in the future?
Costs of inaction are often phrased in the negative. If we don’t do X, we will miss out on Y.
Whereas benefits are phrased in the positive. If we do X, then we will capture Y.
As people we are motivated to move toward benefits or away from costs. So getting clear on both benefits and costs can be an important motivator.
We can clarify the cost of inaction by looking at our actions (including our potential actions) and asking the question, ‘if I don’t do this, what might I miss out on?’
I hope you find these tips useful in planning your personal goals. Maybe one of these will make a big difference.
If you use other methods from your professional life to help your personal one, share your idea with others by leaving a comment below.
