I am a believer in the power of project management.
As a professional project manager for nearly twenty years I have witnessed project success drive business results. I have also proven that project management can change lives and help achieve personal transformation. Now I am sharing some practical tips and techniques that you can use to help achieve your own personal goals, live your best life and become a PM Believer.
Risky Business
“There I was, minding my own business when all of a sudden…”
There is one rule that applies to all projects: they don’t go the way you would expect. Stuff happens. Things go wrong.
But rarely is it really “all of a sudden” that a problem occurs. Nearly all problems (or issues) that you encounter are something that you could have predicted and planned for well in advance.
Risks are issues that haven’t happened yet. They get identified before becoming an issue which gives you time to build mitigation plans. This means taking steps to reduce the probability that this problem will happen and/or reduce the negative impact if it does.
This process is called risk management and will help you “mind your own business” and avoid the “all of a sudden” issues.
The good news is that it isn’t that hard to get started with risk management. The difficult times we all live in have helped condition us for the first step.
What might go wrong?
Said differently, assume that you failed to achieve your goal, what caused the failure? Ask yourself these questions and build a list of the things that might happen that could prevent you from meeting your goal.
For each item on your list determine how likely it is to happen and how impactful that would be. I like to use a scale of one to ten for each. Multiply them together to get your total risk exposure from each.
For example, if your goal is to become a millionaire, your risk could be something like “I might get abducted by aliens and not be able to work for a week while they conduct their devious experiments.”
The impact of this would be pretty big – lost your job, unable to pay your bills and long-lasting repressed memories. The impact would be a ten. But the probability is, hopefully, very low. Maybe a one. Your total exposure would only be a ten.
Focus on the top few risk exposures and make a plan to reduce the probability and impact of the risk.
What can you do to reduce the probability? Wear a tinfoil hat?
What can you do to reduce the impact? Maybe purchase some alien abduction insurance – it has to exist.
By spending some regular time thinking ahead to what might go wrong you can plan ahead. With enough mitigation planning, you can be ready when things get off track.
Uh oh, what are those lights in the sky?!
Are you ready to be a PM Believer?
Are you feeling good about your plan to achieve your goals? Guess what, it isn’t going to go exactly as planned. It is critical to expect and prepare for challenges in reaching your goal. Do this by reducing the probability that the issue will happen and/or the impact of it does.
How have you applied project management for your personal success? Tell me about it at OperationMelt.com and make sure to join my email list to have updates delivered to your inbox weekly.
Make sure to help your friends achieve their goals by sharing this post on your social network and by following me on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram.
Want to know more about how I changed my life with project management? Pick up your copy of my book Operation Melt: How I Used Life-Changing Project Management to Lose Over 100 Pounds In Under a Year.
About Operation Melt
Operation Melt started as a blog to share my personal transformation and weight loss story. After achieving success with that goal, Operation Melt has evolved into a platform to help inspire, motivate and equip people to achieve their own personal and professional goals so they can live their best lives. My vision is to build a world where no goal ever dies of loneliness.
