Not providing feedback. Not making time for the team. Not delegating. Misunderstanding the role. Failing to define goals. And, last but not least : being too friendly. This is how to overcome your challenges as a new Manager.
Sometimes, even managers need a little hand… An online collaboration service platform, like Taskworld, can be a secret weapon in this arsenal that can work on several fronts to help a manager use his or her time more efficiently and effectively fight the “7 Pain Points of Project Management” that all teams face.
Pain Point 1: Organization
This is half the battle. Organization is often the most time-consuming part of a manager’s work life. Planning, delegating and keeping track of delegated tasks are essential to getting things done in an orderly manner. Once these processes are set however, a manager is able to concentrate on other responsibilities.
Pain Point 2: Accountability
Deciding who is responsible for what can be a difficult task for a manager, especially when there are multiple individuals working on accomplishing the same task. Accountability needs to be established clearly and without any opportunity for misunderstanding, so that all parties involved are prepared to take on the exact responsibilities given to them.
Pain Point 3: Consolidation
Being able to see everything pertaining to a given activity in one place can be a great advantage. Having a single location where all information is consolidated can help a manager keep track of delegated tasks, access all version of a task or project and inform all participants of changes at the same time.
Pain Point 4: Follow-up
If a manager was expected to remember every task he or she assigned and then to follow it up efficiently, nothing would ever get done. Writing things down and email threads are a better way of going about the follow-up process, but consolidation can be time-consuming when errant tasks suddenly become urgent.
Pain Point 5: Evaluation
Providing valuable feedback is a key responsibility that a project manager must take head on. There’s no way a manager can do this if there isn’t an established set of practices to collect and analyze an employee’s performance.
Pain Point 6: Visibility
In a traditional setting, employees are not privy to the information that is being used to evaluate their performance. This can be an inefficient way of facilitating continuous improvement, as employees do not know what they are doing wrong and what they can do to improve their performance.
Pain Point 7: Feedback
Managers must then take on the charge of providing quality feedback. Good feedback must be fair, clear and preferably done face to face. Tact and finesse must be used in the case of employees showing a lack of improvement and be encouraging when reinforcing the good performance of others.Setting good management practices into place can help to surpass the pain points of being a project manager. Incorporating technology in your methodology is an efficient way to doing this. A tool like Taskworld can be used as a way to set up processes for effective for delegation and performance tracking to improve transparency and establish a continuous feedback loop within a team.
