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.
How To Prevent Unexpected Roadblocks From Derailing Your Journey
“There I was, minding my own business when all of a sudden…”
If there is one rule that applies to all projects, it’s that 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) you encounter are something you could have predicted and planned for well in advance.
Risks are issues that haven’t happened yet. Risks get identified before becoming an issue, giving 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? Or, 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 your probability and impact together to get your total risk exposure.
For example, suppose your goal is to become a millionaire. In that case, 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 – losing your job, unable to pay your bills and having long-lasting repressed memories. So, your 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 about what might go wrong, you can preplan for how to mitigate each risk. 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 if it does.
Need some help planning ahead for what might go wrong? Let me share my twenty-five years of “what if” experience.
Click Here to learn more about my Operation Melt coaching services.
Breathe new life into your goals
Download my free ebook to learn how to create goals that actually work and get the jump-start you need in life!
