Editor: Project manager and writer Scott Berkun knows how to get things done when you’ve got a team of people, a to-do list, and a deadline. Today he offers an excerpt from the updated edition of his best-selling book The Art of Project Management (our review), entitled Making Things Happen.
Prioritization is always more emotional than intellectual, despite what people say. Just like dieting to lose weight or budgeting to save money, eliminating things you want, but don’t need, requires being disciplined, committed, and focused. Saying “exercise is important” is one thing, but ranking it against other important things is entirely different. Many people chicken out of this process. They hedge, delay and deny the tough choices, and the result is that they set up projects to fail. No tough choices means no progress. In the abstract, the word important means nothing.

The easiest way to make a goal meaningful is to use ordered lists and a high priority one bar. These two simple tools force you to make tough decisions early. An ordered list simply means putting your goals in priority order, most important at the top, least important at the bottom. Divide that list in half: the top are things you must do, or die (Priority 1). The rest are things you hope to do, but can live without (Priority 2). Make your priority 1 list as small as possible: set a high bar. The smaller your list of must do’s, the easier they are to achieve. You will face waves of conflicting emotions as you decide what is truly important, but once you settle on priorities the hard decisions will be behind you.
Doing the tough decision making early creates clarity, and clarity is the true way to make things happen on projects. No-bullshit tools like ordered lists reinforce commitments and make them public. Everyone can show up to work with a strong sense of what he is doing, why he’s doing it, and how it relates to what others are doing. When the inevitable moments of doubt arise and you or your team question the plans, you want to be ready. If people can easily look back to a simple set of ordered goals, it enables simple, direct and clear questions. Even if there are disagreements, the clarity of the goals makes those debates productive and positive.

Priorities are power

Have you ever been in a tough argument that you thought would never end? Perhaps half your team felt strongly for adding more features, and the other half felt strongly for increasing quality. But then the smart team leader hero dude walks in, asks some questions, divides the discussion in a new way, and quickly gets everyone to agree. It’s happened to me many times. When I was younger, I chalked this up to brilliance: somehow the leader was just smarter than the rest of the room. But as I paid more attention I realized it was about having rock solid priorities. They had an ordered list in their heads for what is most important and were able to share it with others when necessary. Good priorities are power. They eliminate secondary distractions from the discussion, making it easier to focus on what matters.
If you have priorities in place you can always ask questions in any discussion that reframe the argument. This can work when working alone or with others. When there is uncertainty or disagreement, reframe the discussion around the priorities using questions like these.

• What problem are we trying to solve?
• Does this problem relate to our top goals or is it a distraction?
• Is this problem important enough to warrant changing our priorities?
• What is the simplest way to resolve this that will allow us to meet out goals?
• If we’re struggling to meet our goals, which goal can we drop down to Priority 2?

Things happen when you say No

One effect of having priorities is how often you have to say no. It’s one of the smallest words in the English language, yet many people have trouble saying it. The problem is that if you can’t say no, you can’t have priorities. The universe is a large place, but your priority one list should be very small. That small list means there are thousands of good ideas that must be denied to focus your energy on the ones you’ve chosen to pursue. If you continually say yes to ideas that do not match your priorities, you are saying yes to failure. If you want to change your priorities, that’s one thing, but if you are constantly changing them then they were never priorities at all. You did not think deeply enough about them if, emotionally, they are easy to change every few hours. So a fundamental law is this: if you can’t say no, if you can’t protect your priorities, you can’t make things happen.
Excerpt copyright © 2008 Scott Berkun. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

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Berkun’s no-nonsense, common sense advice is a good read whether or not your business card title reads “Project Manager.” If you’ve got a crazy-making manager who can’t keep your team on track? Buy a copy of this book leave it on his or her desk this summer.

Making Things Happen [Amazon]

 

How to Prepare your Home for Solar and Save Money Now

Hello my name is (your name), I help you reserve your solar power system with Citizenre. I am following up with you about a new tool that will help you prepare your home for solar, help reduce your carbon footprint and save money now while you wait for your system. As you know, it has been some time since we have spoken. That reflects delays in our manufacturing plans. Everything is still moving ahead, and we expect to announce our manufacturing plans in the near future

But in the meantime, there is still a great deal that you can do, to both help the planet and to help yourself. You may not have fully realized this, but Citizenre is more than just a solar company. We are a “clean energy company”. The company has just released a video with Sustainability Consultant, Chris Prelitz, that explains how to prepare your home for solar and save money right now.

The links are below to view the videos, but they can also be found in the Resources section of your customer back-office, so I want to make sure that you know how to log in.

If you don’t know how to log in to your account. Just go to jointhesolution.com and click on “My Account” on the upper right of the screen. Put in the email that you registered with and the system will send you a new password. Sometimes the email will go to your spam folder, so if you don’t get it right away, check there. Once you are in, just click on Resources, then Video.
If you know how, then great! I think you will enjoy the video. I also want to make sure that you know that even though our manufacturing plant has been delayed, your low monthly rental is locked in from the time you signed the contract and you will still receive all the benefits we have promised to you, so no worries there.

In addition, it is even possible that you might receive a greater energy and environment benefit, if you are able to take some of the steps in this video. If you save energy now, you will have a lower energy bill today. If you are diligent about it, you may also reduce the size of the REnU system that you will need in the future. That will result in a smaller monthly payment for every single month that you rent.

That’s a win-win-win – you win, we win because you save money and the planet wins.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at (contact info).

Video Links:

www.citizenre.net/extras/videos/chris_prelitz/

www.citizenre.net/extras/videos/chris_prelitz/steps_to_save.html

Check out www.Greendrinks.org

If you are looking for a way to Grow your business /meet and greet others that share an environmental interest . This just might be the place to do it .

http://www.chatmaker.net/

I want to preface this account with a little background. When I first started with Citizenre back in March of 2006, I was your average American Citizen. I went to work. I paid my bills. I knew electricity prices were headed up but just accepted it. I knew gas was going up but really just swept it off as “a inevitable cost of living increase”. I have heard a lot about “Global Warming” and thought Al Gore was a “Fruitcake” who made a ass of himself in his run for the Whitehouse. O.k., I know some of you may disagree with the last statement but that is how I saw it.

Since becoming a Ecopreneur, my life has changed. My eyes are open. Peak oil is either here or has just passed. Oil prices are probably not coming down this time. And, whether you believe in “Global Warming” or not, you can’t argue that breathing in smog and pollution from our energy producing coal plants is good for us.

So now to our “Living with Ed” moment. I was helping my wife empty the groceries and noticed that she bought a four pack of 60w incandescent light bulbs. I asked why did you buy these instead of the compact fluorescents.

Her reply was “well they are much cheaper and those compact things burn out just as fast as the regular bulbs.” Now in the past I would have just let it go and moved on, but now, “Oh No.” I pulled out my calculator, pen, and paper and this is what I came up with:

For this example I used a 60w incandescent and its equal, a 14w compact fluorescent. In keeping with my wifes argument, “That the compacts burn out just as fast as the regular ones”, I used the 2000 hour life expectancy of the incandescent. Also we used the ave. Kwh rate of $0.13/Kwh.

60watts x 2000hrs=120,000watts/1000=120KwH x $0.13=$15.60 for electricity to run this bulb through it life.

14watt x 2000hrs=28,000watts/1000=28KwH x $0.13=$3.64 for electricity to run this bulb through the same life expectancy of the incandescent.

Keep in mind that the compact is rated to last for 14,000 hrs.

Conclusion: For each bulb we change in our house, we will save $11.96 in electricity through the life of the bulb. Since the incandescent cost $0.36 each and the compacts cost $1.74 each, the savings in electricity more than outweighs the $1.38 difference in cost.

Last Conclusion: We will be switching all of our lamps over to compact fluorescents as the “regular” ones expire. I hope you will do the same.

Louis Petrik
Senior Sales Director – citizenre– CapCitySolar team
www.longhornsolar.com

 

(If you have your own living with Ed moment email it in)

Geek to Live

Rock Your Presentation with the Right Tools and Apps

At some point in your career as a student or professional, you’re going to have to give a presentation—and when you do, you want to be prepared with the right content and applications. Whether your demo’ing software or explicating Melville, a computer hooked up to a projector can either give an audience a great audio/visual experience, or a bullet-studded snoozer. Whether you’re using a Mac or Windows, PowerPoint or Keynote, or simply presenting straight from your web browser, there are a few power tips, apps, and tools that can make your slideshow or demonstration smooth, entertaining and memorable. Photo by jurvetson.

Ditch the Bullet Points

If you’re doing a straight PowerPoint or Keynote slideshow, do your audience a favor: forget bullet points. While they’re easy to write and easy to read off your screen, they’re hard on your audience. Pick up a copy of Clif Atkinson’s Beyond Bullet Points and make yourself fill in the template he offers for download, to structure your presentation into an engaging story, not a lifeless collection of bulleted lists. See our original review of Beyond Bullet Points.

Pre-program Typing with Text Substitution

If you’re showing off software or doing any sort of interactive demonstration that involves typing, don’t waste your audience’s time watching you fumble with the keys because you’re nervous under the pressure of your their collective gaze. Pre-script any text entry you have to do using text substitution, with free software like Texter on Windows, TextExpander on the Mac or Snippits on Linux. Not only will your audience be impressed with your efficiency (and lightning-fast typing), they’ll love you for being prepared and keeping things moving along with ease.

Zoom and Call Out Sections of Your Screen

Want to show off a detail in an image, enlarge a small video or draw on screen like a football coach choreographing a play? There are a few ways you can zoom into and freehand draw right onto areas on screen while you present.

• See closeups of screen areas with ZoomIt (Windows)—free software with configurable keyboard shortcuts zooms in on areas on screen and draws on it with different-colored pens.
• Zoom into any area of your Mac’s screen—using an accessibility option built into OS X, zoom into an area of the screen, no additional software required.
• Call out anything on your screen with Highlight (Mac)—draw on your Mac’s screen.

Tip: consider screencasting these types of show and tell techniques to ensure no operator error during the live presentation.

Dim the Background Clutter

Want your audience to focus on the foreground application, dialog box or maybe just the video playing in the middle of the screen? Both the Clutter Cloak for Windows and Doodim for Mac are free apps that can darken everything on-screen except what’s important.

Increase a Web Page’s Font Size

If you’re presenting a web page with text on it, assume it’ll be illegible to your audience unless it’s enlarged. In Firefox, a simple Ctrl++ can increase font size after a page is loaded; even better, preset your presentation pages to more legible sizes using the excellent NoSquint Firefox extension.

Before You Leave the House: The Hardware Checklist

This should go without saying, but I showed up at my last public speaking gig without my Mac’s DVI to VGA adapter. So before you head out to your presentation, make sure you’ve got:

• An extra ethernet cable (as lengthy as possible)
• A DVI to VGA adapter to hook up your laptop to the projector (if necessary)
• A thumb drive with your presentation file stored on it

More Presentation Power Tips

A few more tips for making your presentation great:

• Split the screen and use your computer as a giant clock or to simply display the notes view of your slide show
• Get your PowerPoint keyboard shortcuts straight
• Publish and share your slides with SlideShare
• While you should be prepared for your venue having faulty or no internet connectivity at all, you can host and give your presentation on the web with Google Documents (now with Presentations), Zoho Show or Preezo
• Check out Merlin Mann’s roundup of tools he used to perfect his recent Inbox Zero presentation

What are your favorite presentation tricks and tips? Let us know in the comments.

If you don’t know what you want,you won’t know when you’ve gotten it

Posted Wednesday, August 29, 2007 – 09:29 by Sarah Winfrey in Life Hacks

When it comes to your life, what do you want? How does your money fit into that?

If you can’t answer these two questions, you won’t ever know when you’ve been successful. In fact, it might be worse than that: you might achive what you thought you wanted, or what all of your friends want, and suddenly realize that it doesn’t satisfy. In order to make sure you’re going the right direction for you, it’s important to figure out what you want from your life (to find your definition of “success”).

Why it Works

We’re all going after something. That’s part of being alive. As long as we’re living and acting, we are headed towards something. Even if we don’t want to live, we’re going towards our goal (yes, death is a goal!). Our lives are going somewhere. We’re caught up in the stream of living and we’ll end up somewhere.

Luckily for us, we have some say about where we can end up. Sure, we all die in the end, but we have the abilitiy to decide what is important and make choices towards that end. If you’re saying, “Sure, Sarah, we all know that. Make this entry worth reading, already!” then tell me what you’re living for. Go ahead, tell me what your life’s goal is. Tell me why you’re on this earth and how all the different parts of your life fit into that.

If you can do that, you’re ahead of most of us. Deciding what we want, what we’re about, takes a lifetime of deliberate, focused introspection. But we can figure out different parts of this whole at different times in our lives, and we can live deliberately towards them.

How it Works

If you’re not sure how to get started in this process, here is a process that helps.

1. Take out a blank sheet of paper. In 10 minutes, list as many things as possible that you have not done, that you would regret not doing if you died tonight. To the best of your ability, don’t stop writing and don’t censor or even think too hard about anything. Just write. You might find some crazy things coming out the end of your pen, and that’s ok. Let them be.

2. Read your list. Notice any internal reactions you have to different items on the list. Note these in the margins next to your list so you can remember them later.

3. Step away from the project for 3-7 days, except to read your list once a day. This lets the list percolate in your mind. Often, writing down our desires brings to the forefront things that we haven’t thought about in a while, or voices things we avoid voicing any other time. It can take us a few days to become accustomed to these thngs being a reality in our lives. We learn to accept, “Yes, I am the person whose life won’t feel complete if I never help the refugees in Darfur,” or, “Yup, I’m the busy entrepreneur who really wants a desk job so I can spend more time with my kids before they leave home.”

4. Come back to the project and read the list again. Note any internal reactions that have changed as you let the ideas percolate.

5. Start pulling the different items on your list together and write a statement that encompasses what you’re about. In the beginning, this can be a list of more general cateogories that cover all of the items on your list. For instance, my list would containg such items as “helping people grow” and “working with groups to help them better understand and support each other.” My larger category might be, “working with people, as individuals and in groups, to help them better understand and support the growing process in themselves and others. Eventually, this statement will be less like a list and more like a sentence or two, but the list is fine to start.

6. Write down and commit to one step you can take this week! today! right now! to help move your life more in line with your statement. Make sure that this is small enough to be achievable and is something you can maintain.

7. Repeat stps 3-6 until you have a statement that feels right. Most people know when they’ve hit on the one that’s right for them. It moves many to tears, but some also feel joy or peace when they find it. Continue with the small goals until your life looks like what you want it to be.

8. Live the life you’ve designed. Achieve your definition of success.

1. Believe that your own efforts will make a difference.

2. Acknowledge fears and recognize weaknesses.

3. Read.

4. Focus on strengths.

5. Recognize that bad times are only temporary.

6. Build relationships and recruit others to help them.

7. Set moderate goals and plan for the future.

8. Work hard for what you want in life.

Notes from Glenn Morris’ Path Notes of an American Ninja Master.

Geoffrey James has a great post about the cold-calling process. He dissects the before, during, and after elements of the call and points out how you can improve. Here’s a clip from his post on Bnet.com

Rather than a chore that’s a bore, think of cold calling as a performance. And rather than a drone with a phone, think of yourself as a great musician or athlete, a star performer who must (and can) excel under pressure. Great performers, regardless of their area of expertise, rehearse daily, warm up before a performance, and review each performance to figure out how to improve next time. Here’s what you do:

BEFORE THE CALL

Step 1. Remember the goal. What is the purpose of this call, depending upon the your sales process? Take a few seconds to refocus on exactly what you want the customer to do.

Step 2. Consider the prospect. Review what you know about your prospect, your prospect’s company and industry. Determine the “hot buttons” that will cause that prospect to consider taking the action that’s the goal of the call.

Step 3. Script the intended conversation. On paper, review how you’d like the conversation to go. Map out the basic flow, anticipate objections and imagine how you’re going to close.

Step 4. Rehearse the conversation. Go over the script two or three times so that it becomes more natural. If possible practice the conversation with a colleague. This greatly reduces anxiety.

Step 5. Mentally prepare yourself. If you’d done all of the above, you should feel more confident of your ability to make a successful cold call. Observe this, and let that confidence dominate your thoughts.

Sales Machine » How To Be a Cold-Calling Superstar on BNET