Managing Multitask Jobs

By Brian Tracy

All of life is a series of projects. A project is a complex task. It is often called a multitask job. This type of job requires the coordination of efforts of several people, each of whom is responsible for a part of the job, with every part of the job being necessary for successful completion. Your ability to handle these multitask jobs is a critical skill for success. All achievements of consequence are complex, and they involve the cooperation of many people.

The Key Management Skill
A study by Stanford University of the qualities that companies look for in promoting people into the position of chief executive officer concluded that the ability to put together a team to accomplish a task was the single most important identifiable quality of an executive who was destined for the fast track in his/her career. Your ability to put together teams to do multitask jobs or complete complex projects will determine the course of your career as much as any other factor. It will enable you to multiply yourself times the talents and efforts of others, and accomplish vastly more than you could do on your own.

A Learnable Skill
Project management is a learnable skill, like riding a bicycle. It can be divided into a series of steps, each of which you can master, one at a time. In managing any project, you begin by defining the ideal desired result of the project. What exactly are you trying to accomplish? What will the project look like if it is a complete success? Start by defining a successful completion of the project, the ideal desired result.

Start at the Beginning
Once you are clear about your desired result, you then start from the beginning. Determine what you are going to have to do to get from where you are to the completion of this project, on schedule and on budget. Determine a specific deadline or target to aim at. Make sure that it is realistic and achievable.

Assemble the Team
Bring together all the people whose contributions will be necessary for the success of this project. Sometimes you need to assemble a team before you can even decide upon the ideal result and the schedule. Remember that people are everything. Take ample time to think carefully about the people who are going to be the team members.

Develop a Shared Vision
A shared vision is an ideal future picture of success that everyone buys into. How do you develop a shared vision? You sit down with the members of your team and work with them to answer the question, "What are we trying to accomplish?" You encourage everyone to contribute, visualize, and to imagine the ideal outcome or desired result of the project. Once this vision is clear and shared by everyone, you move on to the development of "shared plans" to achieve the vision.

Set Schedules and Deadlines
Once you have a shared vision and shared plans, and everyone knows exactly what is to be done and what the ideal results will look like, the next step is for you to set a deadline for project completion based on the consensus of your team.

Action Exercise
What project are you trying to complete? What kind of employees do you need to successfully work on the project? What is your deadline? What is your sub-deadline?