Top Time Management Tips For Smart Project Managers

Time management is the biggest quality of a smart project manager making him worth the designation he holds. Be it a small firm or a huge enterprise, it is the management department that makes every department function smoothly. For making the project development process function seamlessly, taking proactive measures becomes crucial. It takes right efforts, dedication and time management to work on the project and deliver within the deadlines.

Aspects that Help Develop Better Time Management

A Plan

Planning is the first step that helps to figure out the method for project accomplishment. If you have built a plan, moving accordingly will save time as well as avoid the confusions that occurs in the ongoing process. The well defined milestones will help you focus on priorities. Building an efficient plan will help both the project managers and team members to define a clear project development process.

The To-Do List

When you have a clear idea about the things to do, it is advisable to note it down on a paper. Once you have noted down, modification made, can have a track record to avoid missing any of the crucial task. Once the to-do list is ready, it should be scheduled without any delay. Give every task the right amount of time depending on their intensities. It also helps you decide the direction you are heading is correct or it needs some alterations. If the project managers work accordingly, nothing can stop from achieving success. This list not only helps managers, offering corporate business solutions, to fulfill their tasks on time but also helps the overall business to perform ethically.

The Tasks

It’s time for some action now. Once the planning is over, now is the time to execute the processes mentioned in the to-do list. It is advisable to accomplish one task at a time. As every important task needs sufficient focus, taking only one task at a time will help you avoid the pitfalls in the plan. Complete the entire task before starting with the next task. This will make the development process clear and efficient. Project managers can increase their and development team’s productivity remarkably.

The Distractions

Distractions are the biggest obstacle that affects the timely delivery of any project. Although, eliminating all the distraction is next to impossible for the project managers as they need to get involved in every task, communicate with every team member and solve their doubts, but they can also work on it. It s can be minimized by training an individual, which would help you spare time for your work. Being social unnecessarily can eat up your valuable time that could have made the work productive. Build impeccable strategies to complete the project within the deadline. Reduce communication to a greater extent to avoid distractions affecting your project development process, negatively.

The Communication

Team communication takes majority of the time. Focus on time management in the development process. Rather than investing time in unimportant interactions, invest it in some productive tasks. Schedule the time of communication with team members and higher authorities depending on the communication needs. Right time management of time will let the project managers manage the development process flawlessly.

The Preparation

Prior to starting any task, take some time in preparing yourself to get the desired results. This will help you know the importance of success before you start. Even ask yourself that whether the accomplished task delivered the expected results? If yes, you started off in the correct direction, and if no, try harder to achieve the desired results.

Hope these tips will help the project managers, looking for time management tips and techniques for successful project development process. If you are a manager and head a team of technical professionals, what are you waiting for? Implement all these tips in your development strategy to get the best of your skills and talent.

How Smart Entrepreneurs Manage Their Underperforming Employees

Not every employee can adjust and perform remarkably well in the company culture. The bitter reality is every huge company has best employees along with the underperforming employees. It takes the management skills of business owners that decide whether to manage underperforming employees as assets or let the company experience a downfall?

Factors like behavior, poor skills etc. are not the managements concern this might be the thinking of many business owners, but will it not affect the business performance? Obviously, it will. Such situations can be managed tactically. Considering their approach, floundered employees can be brought back to work efficiently through the ways mentioned below.

Ways to Manage Underperforming Employees

1.Provide Accurate Feedback

Prior to start criticizing the employee for their poor performance, give them the accurate feedback. Speak to the employee before the situation goes out of control and it affects work quality. It is better to drive their focus to the work by refreshing approach rather than reinforcing for no cause. Planning in the correct direction might save the employees getting poor performance tag.

2.Listen to them

Communication being a 2-way process, leaders should listen to their employees before getting judgmental. Allow them to explain the reasons and their point of view. Find out why the employee has stopped working efficiently as compared to their earlier performance. Is there any other reason, which stops them to flaunt their best skills? Understanding the problem is the key to successfully boosting the performance of employees.

3.Show Care and Concern to your Employees

If the corporate business solution finds an issue affecting several employees, company owners should solve it smartly. If an individual feels, he or she is overburdened with work; this might be felt by other employees too. This situation can be resolved by calling a meeting with heads of the department to discuss the working culture. Ask them to define the areas they need to progress and the strategies that are expected to be implemented. Then you can understand the facts and problems being raised by the employees and find the solution. Make your employees feel valued by solving their issues.

4.Find the Factors that Distract

It is very hard to find what factors are responsible for the change in employees working pattern. Figure out what is causing less performance by getting to the root of the problem. But improper diagnoses can lead to certain issues. Increasing pressure, if the employee is not putting efforts, might not help if the ability is the concern. If he or she is not able to work for the given job profile than pressurizing might the worst scenario. There might be several reasons like co-workers, company rules, difficult tasks, frequent deadlines etc. which would encourage them, not to work. Find such factors to resolve them as soon as possible.

5.Find the Factors that Motivate them

Once you find the factors that distract your employees and you find ways to resolve the situation, its time to find the factors that motivates them to work. Find their long term goals like where they would like to see themselves in next three to five years.

Motivation is the only key that helps employees to retain their work efficiency. This can be done by identifying the people who need performance boost. This technique will even help business owners to find whether the employees are provided with the correct roles and responsibilities.

6.Refresh Performance Goals

Rather than implying your own working methods and strategies in your organization, taking the inputs from your employees like how would they like to achieve targets, learn new skills or how they would like to improve will surely yield mutual beneficial results. Invite and engage your customers in developing methods that would motivate them for better work performance. Also offer them rewards like bonus or increment to keep their spirit of working, high.

7.Follow Up

A good leader is expected to follow up with their employees to avoid any further issues. This can be done once the goals are decided and strategies are made and followed to achieve these goals. Leaders should show interest in their employees work and help them achieve their targets. This will boost their moral and ultimately it would help a companys culture to progress. This behavior of the business owner will make the employees feel important and helps them boost their work efficiency.

8.React if Underperformance Persists

If the employee continues to underperform, the head of the department should notify them about this. Leaders can even inform their employees about the intolerable attitude and behavior. Departmental heads can even take some actions given the company rules and regulations. Such employees may even influence other hard working employees to behave the way they are doing. This kind of employee behavior should not be tolerated and should be tackled as soon as possible.

If you own an enterprise with such employees, the above stated points might help you to manage underperforming employees in a better way.