Changing the way we working: delivering impact through better project management

Changing the way we work: delivering impact copyright from mlocock

A workshop developed with Andrea Bradley covering the nuts and bolts of formal project management methods like PRINCE2 and MoRPHE, but also placing emphasis on the key question of how managers think and behave.


A summary was published in The Archaeologist 89 (Autumn 2013), pp. 17-21.

This workshop was developed in response to a perceived gap in opportunities to improve the standard of management in British archaeology.  Andrea Bradley of BIPC and I share an unusual perspective on project management, since we both combine experience of commercial archaeology with work outside archaeology and training in the PRINCE2 formal project management methodology.  There have been attempts since the 1990s to use the wisdom and techniques of management theory in archaeological contexts, but these have made little headway until recently.  To begin with we mapped out a brisk introduction to project management theory and terminology, but we realised as we talked about our experience of applying it in practice that much more important than any specific technique was the attitude of the project manager, and so we deliberately constructed the programme to start and end with changing the mental landscape.  All effective Continuing Professional Development must be personal development if it is make a real difference to future performance through changed behaviour.  This article summarises the key points.

Understanding ourselves

Although project management techniques have their place, the need for self-awareness and reflection is greater.  The workshop's first exercise explored our individual values and priorities by identifying our most intense experiences.  For many people this came from their leisure time or family life.  Unless we understand our drivers it is difficult for us to operate effectively.

Exercise: Self-assessment

There are no right or wrong answers.  You will not be showing your responses to anyone else, so be as honest as possible.  The exercise consists of 4 statements, which you are asked to score from 1 (disagree strongly) to 5 (agree strongly).

	Disagree Neutral   Agree
I am competent and professional in my role	1        2        3        4      5
I find my role satisfying and productive	1        2        3        4      5
I am passionate about being involved in excavation	1        2        3        4      5
I make a positive contribution to the success of projects	1        2        3        4      5

The time you have taken to answer these questions is probably the longest you have spent on reflection in the last year.  But you answers are vital in setting any goals for improvement.  People are very poor at evaluating their own performance -psychologists have identified the Dunning-Kruger effect, the phenomenon where the less we know about a subject, the more confident we are in our opinion.  This is exacerbated by the prevalence in many organisations of a culture is "Don't ask don't tell" about people's performance, except for annual appraisals.  The rest of the time poor performance (or good performance) is not discussed.  One helpful tool is the 360 degree evaluation, where anonymous feedback from bosses, peers and underlings allows you to compare your idea of how you are doing with those of others.  There is a free survey available from www.carregffylfan.co.uk/media.html 

Projects and project management

There is a traditional view that the management of archaeological projects is unique bit is is archaeology, but this exceptionalism was challenged by one of the workshop's exercises.  Participants were asked to report on a recent project that had failed and to identify the reasons for failure.  The answers were: poor planning, poor communication, insufficient time and resources, unavailability of key staff, and inflexibility in the light of changing circumstances.  Nobody reported that C14 dating or a complex occupation phase was the problem.   The issues are generic, and precisely those that the discipline of project management is aimed at addressing.

Project management is a distinctive subset of general management - it gets its character from the fact that every project is temporary, with a defined endpoint and constrained resources.  As a result, projects involve compromises between standards, scope, costs and time: a good project manager is one who makes the right calls in the face of tough choices.  Project management is not, in essence, complex - it can be summarised as comprising three components: talking to people, moving bits of paper around, and thinking.  Moving bits of paper around is usually the easy bit, while thinking is often undervalued.

Formal project management defines a project as a unique temporary activity delivered a specified change with defined budget and resources, using skills from multiple parts of an organisation or consortium, in order to achieve a business aim.  In business, this aim is usually to generate a profit.  Although some archaeologists would say that a successful project is one that has the right academic or professional outputs, no organisation can afford to lose money forever.

PRINCE2 is the widely-used method in the UK, especially in the public sector, and its terminology and structure have become standard.  It is often perceived as paper-intensive and excessively bureaucratic, but one of the principles is that processes should be tailored for the project.  The key benefits of using PRINCE2 is the clarity about aims, progress and standards which reduces the chance of catastrophic failure.  Few archaeological organisations explicitly use PRINCE2, but PRINCE2 underlies English Heritage's MoRPHE project planning process (the replacement of Management of Archaeological Projects (MAP2 and MAP3)). 

The workshop didn't try to provide a full primer on project management, instead focusing on the issues most relevant to archaeology.

Defining roles

Successful projects tend to have well defined roles without overlaps or black holes, and project management therefore spends a lot of time defining the roles and responsibilities of those involved.  PRINCE2 discourages the creation of large steering committees with periodic progress meetings in favour of a project board restricted to those directly involved, meeting when required to make decisions.  The project board includes representatives of the suppliers (those doing the work), end -users (representing the client) and the corporate interests of the institution (the project executive or director).  The project manager reports to the board, from whom authority within defined limits is derived.  When things are running to plan, the project manager can provide brief highlight and checkpoint reports to the board members, but this can be escalated into ad hoc advice and meetings as soon as the project's success is threatened.  Typically the board's discussion will go like this:

Project Manager	Progress is behind schedule and completion is in doubt
Supplier	We need more time and/or resources to complete the work
User	We need to ensure that standards are maintained if we are to achieve the intended aims
Executive	Providing more resources will reduce the profit generated

These tensions are inherent in any project governance structure - the power of assigning roles like this is in providing a forum and process by which these can be balanced.

Defining the structure

Projects often involve numerous contractors, subcontractors, and stakeholders, in addition to the hierarchy of the project team itself.  It is helpful to draw this structure and share it with others.  Since communication is vital, every link in the structure can be thought of as an information flow, and it is worthwhile considering the medium and frequency with which data will be shared (formal report, email, phone call, or site visit).  Often the process of mapping will highlights some key relationships which have no defined means of communication at all. 

Change, risk and progress

Chang and risk is part of the project landscape.  At the start, there are too many unknowns to predict effectively what will prove possible or desirable.  Good project management allows for this so that the project manager can spot risks and opportunities early and amend plans accordingly.

A thorny issue in archaeology is how we track progress.  It is relatively easy to monitor expenditure and activity to check spend against profile, but this doesn't address the vital question - how much of what needs to be done has been done?  In the end this is largely a judgement call, but project managers should at least be asking themselves this question all the time.

Changing how we work

“The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.” Robert M Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Organisations are hard to change, but it is much easier to change our own behaviour.  The workshop ended with a series of practical tips which could be implemented immediately.  

The 'Five Whys' technique of root cause analysis can be applied to any recurrent problem, major or minor.  All it needs is a partner who can ask penetrating questions, and often the problem's solution emerges.   For example: "They've run out of content sheets on site again."  "Why?" "They didn't take enough." "Why?" "There weren't many left in the sore." "Why?" "The last project took most of them but didn't order more."  It would be possible to devise a complex administrative solution, but perhaps all that is needed is a note on the wall of the store reminding people to order more when the supply is getting low.

"Lessons learned" is a phrase that originated with PRINCE2 and has become a commonplace - continuous improvement comes from not repeating mistakes.  Even if there is no formal post-project review (and there should be), anyone can take some time to reflect on their experience and activity to identify what worked and what didn't.

We also need to recognise that we are not brains on legs - our physical and emotional state can affect our work.  I have a rule: no Excel after 4 o'clock, based on the bitter experience of re-doing financial reports the next morning when I'm awake enough to spot the errors. 

Having an impact

Those who attended the workshop found it inspiring and positive at the time, but more importantly they have taken action on returning to work. 

"I now plan out each morning what I hope to achieve, and review it at the end of the day"

"I make much more effort to explain the background to the tasks and to link it to our company objectives"

"I have found myself noticing my emotional state and deciding to postpone difficult conversations until I'm calmer"

Project management is the art of juggling priorities Photo: Martin Locock

Would your oganisation benefit?  If so get in touch to arrange a workshops.

Quick fix - email pop-ups

Whenever I talk about time management, people's worst problem is email, which robs them of the ability to plan their own work and concentrate on completing it.  Sometimes this is unavoidable - a project manager will have to keep up with emails as they arrive in case one is time critical.  But often the messages are completely irrelevant, routine, or non-urgent, yet they will still have intruded upon the flow of thought.  Studies have shown that after such an interruption it is likely to take 5-10 minutes before the worker returns to the original task.

So how to fix it?  One answer is to make good use of filters and folders so that important messages can be spotted immediately.  But the single simplest change you can make is to notifications.  The defaults for Microsoft Outlook were devised at a time when email traffic was rare and messages were important, so a window pops up to say a new message has arrived; in such circumstances it takes an iron will to deliberately leave the message unread while you finish the sentence you were typing.  It doesn't have to be this way.  Under Outlook > Tools > Options > Email options > Advanced options, it is the work of a few seconds to change the notification to something less distracting, like an envelope on the task bar.

Making this one simple change will give you back the feeling that you can control the way you use your time to best advantage.

Email is your friend, not your enemy

A recurrent feature of any discussion about time management and working practices is the feeling that email is out of control; people say that they have to check it constantly and yet know that the old messages stack up, and they can never deal with it all. As a result, they say that if only they could handle the email mountain and have confidnce that they'd seen the important stuff, they'd be able to cope, leading to the desperate arbitrary expedients of 'email free Fridays' or 'no email after 3.00' rules.

This self-analysis may not, in fact, be accurate: an overflowing inbox may just be the symptom of a wider malaise. But since handling email forms such an important part of modern working, it is worthwhile thinking a little to get it right. Unfortunately, most of the problems come from other people, sending you stuff, but you can at least try to make life easier for your recipients.

WRITING EMAILS

Use the subject line

. . . to say what the subject is. The actual subject, preferably. Anything sent under a geenric heading, or [no subject], will be difficult to locate later when you're trying to find it. Don't use ALL CAPS, and start the subject with the key words.

It's often possible to put all the necessary info in the subject.
Not:

Subject: Re: Meeting tomorrow?



Text: Yes, 10am is fine.

But:

Subject: Meeting 10am ok



Text:

Email conversations tend to drift onto new topics; if this happens it's best to re-title messages periodically, rather than end up with:

Subject: re: re: re: re: re: re: Dinner tonight?



Text: Will you marry me?

For similar reasons, it's much easier to keep track of threads if you stick to one subject per email, so that if there are three issues you want to raise with someone, send three messages: this will allow them to respond to each on its own timeframe. Otherwise it's likely that only the first, or most urgent, issue will actually be addressed.

But there is an even more basic question: should you be writing an email at all? Email is great for short, quick, transient and non-controversial communication with people with whom you have an established relationship. It is not good for arguing, or explaining at length. A good rule of thumb is the 10/5 minute rule: if it will take longer than 10 minutes to write or 5 minutes to read, don't send it by email. Turn it into a Word dodument, or talk on the phone. Few people read long emails carefully, so don't expect them to.

Think hard before you use 'reply all' It is annoying to be copied into a two-sided debate in which you have no interest. Much better to have the debate in private and then circulate the conclusion to all.

If you are going to forward an email, it is helpful to add some sort of gloss: "Do you want to go to this conference?", "See the comment in para 2 which we might want to respond to", or even just a simple "any use?".

I would discourage the use of automatic read receipts. Somebody who has read the subject of an email, and decided to open it, is ready to read the contents, and the intrusion of a pop-up that they must read and click on before they can do so breaks the flow. There are a few occasions when a positive response is needed: I would just add a note in the text: "please confirm you've had this message".

In theory it should be possible to use priority markers (red text, !) to gain the reader's urgent attention to a particular message, but unfortunately these tend to be used only by spammers, and will therefore make people less likely to read it. Instead, start the subject line with "Urgent! "

Having a corporate signature text with phone number and a web address is a good idea. Having one which is bloated with legal disclaimers and vague threats against unintended recipients is a bad idea. Often these disclaimers are so broad that anyone wishing to conduct serious business would be justified in refusing to respond and insisting on dealing with someone whose word could be taken as some form of official sanction. It would be better to train staff in what they should say than to rely on these probably unenforceable clauses. Similarly, asking "do you really need to print this email?" may be ineffective. You could argue that the environmental impact of adding to the size of a message that has to be colelcted and stored by multiple recipients might outweigh the tiny number of trees saved by indecisive readers who were persuaded not to print it.

Don't apologise for cross-posting. The days when you only got messages you wanted have, alas, gone. Wasting everbyody's time by making them read this before getting to the substance is more annoying than getting the same message twice. But equally, don't circulate needlessly. Reading irrelevant emails can absorb an enormous amount of staff time, especially if they are labelled (unhelpfully) "Important notice to all staff" but in fact are of interest to three people in the organisation.

Finally there is the question of tone. It used to be common for people to treat email as if it were an electronic letter, written in the fairly stiff and formal language adopted in many businesses. Increasingly, though, it is coming to resemble speech, and it is hard to maintain that it should necessarliy be any more formal than would be used in, say, a telephone conversation. In general, peopel would rather recive an instant response, even if brief, slangy and mis-typed, than wait half an hour for one which said the same thing but in more coherent prose.

READING EMAILS

So maybe your readers will start being glad to get messages from you. But right now, that isn't really much help with your inbox. What can you do?

Break your messages up into folders. A good way is have folders for individuals or groups. When you're looking for an old message, you may have forgotten its subject or date but probably can remember or guess who had sent it.

Use message rules and filters. It is worth setting up rules so that new messages are moved straight into the relevant folder. You can then at a glance spot responses you were waiting for while leaving others to one side.

Have a folder for newsgroups. Those messages can go straight there and wait for your leisure; alternatively you can periodically use 'mark folder as read' so you can forget the rest. If the newsgroup has an acessible archive (as Jiscmail groups do), you can safely delete these messages en bloc.

Process your emails. Leave non-urgent unread messages in their folders. Scan the messages in the active folders, open the important ones, and respond to the simple ones straight away. Then go back and deal with the important complex ones. Whether you then go on to deal with the others is up to you, but you can be confident that you know about everything you need to for now.

The power of the self-talk

Modesty and self-deprecation are instinctive and engrained, even in managers. This may be particularly true in Britain, where being proud of something is considered to run perilously close to being conceited or arrogant, but it probably universal. Less universal, though, is the inability to take a compliment. I think it is reasonable that when somebody has decided to praise you, you are allowed to say " thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed the talk", not "aw shucks, it was nothing". Reasonable, yes, but easy to do, no.

But perhaps social self-doubt has its role in preserving relationships; unfortunately it often is mirrored by internal self-doubt, the monologue that says "this meeting's going to be hard, you're never very good at this, see, what did I tell you?, it'll be worse next time ...". As a result, it's all too easy to lose sight of the things you can do well, and to miss the chance to bask for a while in the satisfaction of achievement. For a course I was on recently we had to spend five minutes writing in our journals about three things we were good at. It really was hard to break out of the bonds of modesty, and felt completely unnatural. It was very useful, though, to remind us that, yes, we were ok, we weren't necessarily in crisis mode all the time. I cannot remember the last time I had thought along these lines, looking at the positives; self-criticism is a hard habit to break (not that it doesn't have its place, but it's unhealthy as the only mode of thought).

My suggested adaptation is this: write down three headings:
* a skill you have, something you are good at
* your greatest achievement
* the event or person that has changed you most

Think for a minute, then write soemthing down for each heading. You're not deciding your answers for ever; maybe tomorrow you'd choose other examples. What you should be doing is 1, reminding yourself what is important to you and how you have been effective; and 2, practising positive self-analysis that should assist you in understanding your own motivation, values and goals.

It sound silly, but it works.

Getting Things Done: review

Coping with chaos without losing your way
Martin Locock

Title: Getting Things Done
How to achieve stress-free productivity
Author: David Allen
Publisher: Piatkus
Price: £10.99
ISBN: 978-0-7499-2264-1


Most management gurus sound a little detached from the reality of the modern workplace, at best providing some evangelical zeal to revive the fire of inspiration in their readers. David Allen isn't like that: he connects with managers' actual concerns: too many tasks and too little time, piles of papers awaiting action, and lists of thing to do that never get ticked off because of interruptions. He argues that your effectiveness as a decision-maker is undermined by the worry and guilt arising from these 'open loops' (incomplete commitments), and his solution is to transfer this load onto paper, where you can see it and manage it. It's a bit more complex than that, but in essence he says that skills of filing and listing lie at the heart of coping with a large and changing workload without stress.

It is refreshing to see a set of rules that embody instinctive truths: the two minute rule that says if it will take less than two minutes to deal with, do it now, and the 'waiting for' file for tasks which cannot progress until someone else has done something, and which can therefore be ignored for now. There are also refreshing hints like: don't just write in your diary 'phone Jean': write her number as well so you don't have to search for it.

This is an enjoyable and inspiring book for anybody who feels that constant change and competing demands for attention have left them lost and ineffective.



[This will appear in Catalyst, Summer 2008]

Buy the book from Amazon

Annotated book list

A Manager's Guide to Self Development by Mike Pedler, John Burgoyne, and Tom Boydell
Buy it from Amazon

Primers on a wide range of activities and tools, framed within a programme of self assessment and review. Although the chapters contain example exercises, the further reading recommended will be needed to pursue a topic in earnest; it is an excellent way to get a feel for the issues as an introduction.

The Definitive Book of Body Language by Allan Pease and Barbara Pease
Buy it from Amazon

Although presented in a chatty and populist format, this contains a lot of interesting insights into non-verbal communication. Many of their explanations for the origins of behaviour are derived from simplistic evolutionary and sociobiological determinism, but this does not devalue their observation and analysis.

Getting Things Done by David Allen
Buy it from Amazon

Discussed elsewhere: but in summary, well worth buying. I have carried it around with me for months, telling anyone who'll listen about the almost magical powers of the Two Minute Rule (if something takes less than 2 minutes, do it straight away; if not, put it on the list), the Waiting For list (tasks which you can take no action on until someone else does something, and which, therefore, there is no point you thinking about), Next Actions (listing not a big nebulous project like 'buy a house' but the immediate next step, like 'go to an estate agent'), and Agendas (places to note down things you need to say to people when you think of them). It really will change your life, leaving your mind clear to think and your time free to do stuff, not organise stuff.

[fuller review here]

The One Minute Manager by Kenneth Blanchard and Spencer Johnson
Buy it from Amazon

Simple, painless to read advice intended mainly for people managers in offices. The three secrets of the One Minute Manager are setting and agreeing goals, praising good performance, and reprimanding poor performance, within the context of a one minute conversation. A good reminder that leaving people to get on with their work is not the best approach.

Managing Archaeology edited by M A Cooper, A Firth, J Carman and D Wheatley
Buy it from Amazon

Collected papers from sessions on management and archaeology from the TAG 1992 and IFA 1993 conferences. Includes case studies from English Heritage, MOLAS and GGAT, but half the volume is concerned with archaeological resource management and related issues, so there is less emphasis on project management than might be expected.


... and finally
10 simple steps to better archaeological management by Martin Locock


The book of the blog: details here.

Good and bad Powerpoint

There are people who hate Powerpoint because it leads to boring talks (see Death by Powerpoint). I think it's more likely that boring talkers lead to boring talks, but certainly getting the best from it as a presentation medium takes a bit of work.

Is Powerpoint the right format? Why not just talk? Or use slides? Do you have time to put it together? If you're in a hurry, concentrate on deciding what you're going to say, not what it looks like.

Some people like to write out a talk in full and then read it out. This is less effective than a well-executed extempore talk, but much better than a bad one. If you are nervous, read. Reading a text is skill: the key rules are to slow down, leave spaces, leave room for asides that occur to you at the time, and make sure that it is written as a talk: pompous prose sounds terrible when read out.

Almost all talks end up too long. Ideally your planned presentation should run for 75% of the time you have been given: this will allow you to add stuff as you go along. There is a persistent belief that a talk that runs for 40 minutes when practised the night before can magically turn into a 20 minute talk on the day. It can't. If you don't want to run out of time halfway through your second point, you will need to prune the introduction drastically.

If you are going to use Powerpoint, you need to think about delivery. One of the reasons that Powerpoint presentations end up dull is because the speaker talks to the screen with their back to the audience, or sits at the side or the back of the hall. This means that they lose eye contact with their audience and cannot project their voices. You should (if given the choice) stand at the front, facing the audience, to one side of the screen, so that you can see people and they can see you. Be careful if you turn towards the screen or move away from a microphone, because you won't be heard. Your posture should be relaxed so that your voice can resonate, rather than stiff. If you have the slightest inclination to nervously jangle your keys or coins while you talk, it is a good idea to empty your pockets beforehand.

Use F5 Slideshow and the space bar to advance: if you use the mouse you will be trying to use that rather than paying attention to the audience.


I have compiled some advice on content in a Powerpoint Go to Slideshare to see the presentation.


This link might work too:

| View | Upload your own

Sources for sign generators:
Sign generator (book covers)
RedKen (alphabet soup)
Hetemeel (Einstein)
Atom Smasher (computer error messages)
ImageGenerator (MS Office paperclip)


Powerpoint when well-used can be a very effective tool, so it's worth spending some time on.

Drawing up a Personal Action Plan

Most readers probably visited here looking for a couple of tips for specific but minor problems they had encountered. I hope they will have found something useful, or at least got some pointers to possible solutions. But to stop there is to miss an opportunity. Transformational change requires commitment from the individual, and maybe you are at the point where you are ready to take that step. If so, this section will provide a template for a personal action plan, through which you will identify your goals, define a plan, and subsequently monitor your progress and review your plan. To do this I have developed what I call a Love/hate map.

It is interesting to look at the IFA’s CPD scheme of 2002, which covered similar territory (see the download forms and further information on the IFA Training CPD page. The focus there is on knowledge and experience, directly related to current or near-future work, rather than skills; it is improved skills that provide the best pay-off, and are more likely to be transferable in the future.


Stage 1: Preparation

Projects are usually planned in great detail, even if they are short and simple. This is in complete contrast to how those involved handle their career development, which is left to chance or whim. Obviously it isn’t possible to control which jobs fall vacant, or where and when, but it is possible to have a concept of what your next move is likely to be and what would be needed to succeed. But your career development is something worth investing some time in, so treat it seriously.

Before starting the actual process, it is worth exploring whether there is someone you can share it with. If so, this can make things much more productive and enjoyable. Choosing a buddy is difficult: they must be honest and tactful, as well as trustworthy. It is best is it is not your line manager: they will almost always find the switching of roles between boss and confidante too difficult to handle, especially if your long-term aim is to leave. But find a mentor if you can.

Then you’ll need a journal or file where you can assemble your thoughts, and copies of your cv, job descriptions, and organisational documentation. And some time, undisturbed: getting up early in the morning is a good approach.


Stage 2: Analysis

The first stage is to look at your current work and skills. It is easy to define a post in terms which become a shopping list of tasks, but this isn’t very productive. A much better idea is to draw up a Love / hate map.

Write a list of the ten aspects of your current post you feel most strongly about, with a one-word title. This may be a major functional element of your job, or a small task that excites a reaction (foreboding or anticipation). For example:

Meetings Negotiating with developers and curators
Lectures Formal public speaking
Admin Timesheets, expenses and order forms
Writing Writing publication text

It is quite likely that the things that bother or please you the most are 'soft' skills like interpersonal relations, which tend to fall through the gaps in job-focused training.

Go through the list putting between one and three ticks against those you enjoy, and crosses against those you dislike.

The next stage may require external input (where your buddy/mentor might help, or your last performance appraisal), since you now want to try to decide how effective you are at those tasks, independent of whether you like doing them. Assign ticks and crosses as before, with a different colour pen. (Note that the number of ticks is not crucial and it is pointless to obsess over precise measurement).

Draw a large cross on a piece of paper: label the righthand side “Tasks I love”, the lefthand side “Tasks I hate”; the upper half “Tasks I’m good at”, and the lower half “Tasks I’m bad at”.

Grid for Love/hate map

Now write onto the grid your ten tasks in the correct position.

Love/hate map showing tasks

This map by itself shouldn’t be telling you anything you don’t already know, but it may help you understand your strengths and weaknesses.

If the bottom left box is full and the top right box is empty, you are in the wrong job. You shouldn’t spend your time doing badly the tasks you hate.

You may be reassured about the tasks in the top left: you may worry about them but they are not damaging your performance.

The tasks in the lower half are the ones which need action. To prioritise them, you should now circle those tasks which are most central or frequent in your work.

Love/hate map showing frequent tasks

Any circled tasks in the bottom left box need to be looked at first; next would be circled tasks in the bottom right box.


This exercise is not dissimilar to other methods of analysis, except that by brining your feelings into the equation it makes the outcomes much more focused, because moving tasks out of the bottom left box will not only improve your output, it will also make you feel much better. The word ‘happiness’ is not much used in management theory, even though it is critical to performance.


Stage 3: Improving performance

Now you know which tasks need attention, you will have to explore ways to improve. This may be as simple as asking your manager or colleagues for advice or help, or reading a book or website; or it may involve formal study. Most managers leave the identification of training needs to the individual, and as long as you have a clear idea of what you want and how to get it, it shouldn’t be difficult to obtain their support. It is worth noting that even for the most expensive taught courses, the main expense is your time.

It is a good idea to draw up a timetable:

Aspect Current performance Priority Action needed Date
Admin Poor High Inhouse training by May 2008
Meetings Fair Medium Remote learning course by July 2008
Supervising Fair Low Inhouse training or formal course by Dec 2008

The timetable should also have a review date (6 months or a year in the future): write it here, and put it in your diary.


Stage 4: Future plans

It will be seen that the action plan has so far dealt with your current work, not the future. This is deliberate: people's instincts about the past and present are quite reliable; their guesses about the future are not. It is possible to use the map to assist in informing your future plan.

Think about your ideal next job; be as specific as possible ("a Project Officer doing watching briefs for a commercial unit", rather than a "Project Officer"). Find a job description of a similar post, and then compare how many of your 10 mapped aspects will be relevant. If they lie mainly in the love/do badly quadrant, you should seek training to address your performance. If they lie mainly in the hate half of the map, you should look for other possible posts with a better fit.

This can then be developed into a timetable as for Stage 3, with a review date.

If you feel that it is time to move on, you should also think about the sort of application an ideal candidate would submit: what qualifications? experience? skills? attitudes? This may well reveal gaps in the evidence you can provide, which you should try to address before you start applying in earnest.


Stage 5: Review

At regular intervals (the last day of the month, or payday, are good milestones), take five minutes to look at your action plan. Are you making progress? Have you changed your mind or found new areas to explore?

Soon enough, your review date will arrive. If you find that your attitudes have changed completely, re-start the process from Stage 1. If not, consider how far you have come. Discuss your plans with your training buddy. Unlike most conversations about people's so-called careers, this should turn out to be a positive and inspiring exercise.


Discussion

It is easy for introspection to become daydreaming, and debate to become whinging. This action plan is intended to provide a structure which should clarify your goals; it contains no great insights, beyond the obvious one that people enjoy jobs which involve doing things they like and are good at.

Excel cheatsheet

Excel is a powerful and flexible program; the Help area is also well-presented and tells you most things you need to know. Here's a few tips, though.

* Excel is NOT A DATABASE. It isn't. It doesn't pretend to be. It might look a bit like a data input form, but that is not the same thing. (It is common these days in interviews for people to mention Excel when you ask them about database experience). It does, however, have some clever text-handling properties, as well as dealing with figures.

* Problem: cell showing no data, just ########. This perplexes new users and looks fatal. It is completely harmless: this is displayed when the content for a cell is longer than the column width. Widen the column, and the data is shown. (There is a fairly good reason for this feature of the program: if you are showing financial data then you wouldn't want a column showing a deficit of £1003 when the figure was actually £100,300,000).

* Use 'Print selection' and define the area of interest unless you want pages of blank squares

* Use 'Hide columns' when you are working on two widely-separated groups of data (unfortunately this part of the program is not very well developed: an alternative is to copy the data to a new worksheet and delete the unwanted columns from there) (note also that copied and printed data will show Hidden columns) (for this reason it as well to think about the sequence of data elements when you are setting up your worksheet)

* To quickly sum a group of figures, highlight the area; the total is shown at the bottom righthand corner of the screen

* Entering repetitive data: enter the same data in two rows, then select those rows and a block of subsequent rows: it will be entered in all

* Be careful with column/cell properties: unless set to text then any leading zeroes will be dropped (eg an entry listing context "0096" will become "96"). If a column is set to text it will be displayed as entered, but mathematical functions will not work.

* The formula bar should be used for any calculation which may be needed more than once. It is possible to copy a formula into another cell. The default behaviour is if you have created formula "=sum(a2.a12)" in cell a13, to total the column, and then paste it into b13, it will automatically alter the formula to "=sum(b2.b12)". This is very useful but may cause problems if you lay out the data in an unusual way.

* The formula bar can also be used to assemble text strings (for example generating a series of urls by combining the elements: a_href="http://domain.name.com/ | pagename.htm"/ | Page title text | /a using "=concatenate(a1.a12)" to create the string a_href="http://domain.name.com/pagename.htm"/Page title text/a for each row).

* Make sure you save changes when you close the file; it is easy to discard them by mistake

* Excel data can be readily shared and imported into databases by saving as a .csv format file

iGoogle can change your life

I have never been a great fan of customisation. While others were merrily swapping their Windows wallpapers weekly, mine stayed default blue. The only gesture towards personalisation that I made was changing the homepage to Google, as soon as I realised that I visited it 10 times more often than any other. So when Google started to offer add-ons to their classic white screen by showing the small iGoogle option, I wasn't very interested at first: what could it deliver? I eventually had a look, in pursuit of an RSS feed reader (of which more later), and found a wealth of little tools which seemed useful and simple. Now I don't know how I coped before: I certainly wasted a lot more time, effort and nervous energy beforehand.

The process of signing up is straightforward: if you a Gmail.com or Googlemail.co.uk account you just need to log in, if not there's a minute's registration. You should be aware of the fact that you are giving Google even more information about your web activities. At present the worst they seem to threaten is showing you more targeted Google Ads, but it's worth thinking about.


You are then shown a list of possible features to add to your Google page, which could transform it into a virtual desktop.



Here's mine. You'll notice that I've left a fair amount of white space down the middle, but the content runs down further.



This is a deliberate trick; if you fill the screen with tools you will commit the fatal error of making the page slow to load. Similarly some tools are best kept rolled up to the taskbar if not needed. Here is my explanation of what I have chosen:

RSS feed

I don't read a lot of blogs, but spent a lot of time viisting them in turn to see whether anything new had been added, what RSS feeds are designed for. Although other feed utilities are available, Google Reader is the simplest I have found. Every time I use Google I can check to see which blogs have new posts. This can become a distraction; I have to be strict and say:
* use 'mark all as read' even if they're not (you can always go back to read them all at a quieter moment)
* exclude blogs which are updated more than a few times a week (otherwise the list will be overloaded): instead these are bookmarked and visited at leisure (if any)
* exclude blogs where comments are important (you don't see the comments in the feed)


Wikipedia search

One of the key benefits of Wikipedia is that it gives you infromation rather than trying to sell you things. I find Google searches for things like infromation about file formats frustrating because the first two npages of results are effectively commercials.


Gmail

Much the same applies to email: if this were your main email account it would be swamped too quickly to keep track of. Gmail is in any case clunky and prone to freezing and would drive you mad if you used it much. It can be used in clever ways, though: it is a good way of transferring files around as attachments (so that a Powerpoint can be sent to a Gmail address and will be availabel at any conference venue with Internet access); it is also possible to copy all your emails to Gmail to act as a back-up store.


Dilbert

What's that doing here? I thought we were working. Yes, but: if you were going to read the daily cartoon anyway, this is a quicker way of getting there than the rather clumsy website interface.

Personal calendar and planner

Google has its own Calendar system but for some reason I couldn't get it to work. This is a simple alternative, which I use to block out days with meetings on. Logically I should take the plunge and abandon my paper diary, but every few days the calendar can't be reached. Having this on the desktop means that I can access it remotely, a trick not easy to replicate with the diary.

To-do list

This is perhaps the single most powerful yet simplest tool. Create a task by typing it in (carefully: the edit text option doesn't work); then assign it high, medium or low priority. You can change priority at any time. Once a task is complet, click on the X to delete it. I haven't completely abandoned paper lists for very short-term tasks (finished that day), but it is a good way to see at a glance the things that need doing beyond your current task. At one point I found the list getting longer and longer and more and more urgent, until I was spurred into delegating as the only way to deliver; having handed out the jobs to the team it was managebale once more.

I use two lists at the moment, for work and non-work activities; it would be possible to use one per project.


Some negatives

The documentation provided for the tools is minimal and unhelpful; you have to explore how to use them yourself. Many of them are buggy and slightly unreliable; some are slow (the calendar should be kept rolled up for this reason).


But iGoogle is the closest that anyone has yet come to bringing together all the tools you need to operate effectively; once set up, it feels like a rational and effective utility.

Does Getting Things Done get things done?

David Allen has developed personal effectiveness and productivity into a business, under the slogan "Getting Things Done". He provides a range of timesaving tips for efficient working, focusing particularly on habits of filing and storing data and prioritisation. If followed in full, GTD is not so much good practice and more a way of life, but many people find that adopting some of his techniques can transform their workrate and makes them feel that they are in control of their work rather than the other way around. There are expensive options to pursue this but a cheap place to start is the Penguin book.

You may find the relentless enthusiasm and optimism a little wearing in large doses, but you are bound to learn something useful along the way.

[fuller review here]

Using Microsoft Project

Microsoft Project is a sophisticated Office application that can be used to plan, estimate, and monitor projects, tasks, and resources. It is fairly cheap for a piece of business software (£400 or so), although licensing may be an issue (there is a free Project Viewer to allow others on the network read-only access).

Inputting the data into Project takes some time, and this investment is best rewarded if the program is used for the whole life cycle of the project, rather than just planning or implementation. It is possible to use multiple installations across a network to share information about resource availability (so that allocating the same person to work on two projects at the same time would raise a conflict flag, alerting users that action was needed).

The usefulness of the program decreases if it is only employed on a single project; it should not be seen as way of drawing Gantt charts. It can do that, but if that's all you want there are simpler options.

On a final point, this application is unlike most Office programs in requiring professional training to make much use of: trying to teach yourself to use it is hard.