January 2, 2013

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3. A method of measurement. Ensure your milestones are reached by tracking daily progress. Utilize project management tools such as Asana, Team Gantt, and Google Hangouts to facilitate task management, scheduling and collaboration.

Project Management, Productivity and Performance

Whether you are a seed, early-stage startup, or growth company we all yearn for more productivity. Project management — the art of getting things done — fuels this basic business need.

Project management can bring clarity to chaos, eliminate distractions, develop routine, increase motivation, “pool talent,” maximize learning and training, and improve time management. All of these benefits are closely correlated to your productivity.

The more adept you become to managing the details and increasing productivity — the better you will perform. And the reality is: performance — your execution and accomplishment of a task at hand — will always trump an idea.

How to Turn Business Goals into Reality

Now that we have identified the most common culprit of ideas unfulfilled, we can work smarter and turn goals into tangible results.

Unfortunately, I have witnessed smart people sit on an idea for years. When confronted with the need to turn their vision into a reality they adamantly confess, “I am not sure where to begin?!”

Start with the mindset of a project manager.

Your challenge is to identify goals, acknowledge your current state and map out a desirable one that ends in accomplishment. Acquire new knowledge, plan, execute and track your progress with an end in mind.

To get started, take a look at these free project management templates and online project management tools such as Trello, GanttProject, and Collabtive.

Has project management helped you to meet your business goals? Let me know in the comments section below.

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Photo: Massimo Dutti

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