Rehab Execution

Now that we have a plan we can start the execution… The process should be simple – you just follow your plan, right?

Well, in theory, yes. But this is a reality show-time. And in reality, how can we say it gently? Things are not what they are in the books. In order to effectively follow your plan you need to have the following:

• A good team
• A system that enables you to follow up
• Flexibility to change/adjust your plan

A good team – you need to select the right people for the job. Not the most expensive ones and not the cheapest ones – just the best for the job. You need to identify what are the strengths of each one of the team members and assign the work accordingly.

A system to follow up – you need to establish an effective mechanism to follow up on your plan. We are doing it by conducting a weekly meeting. In this meeting, we assign action items and following up on the open ones. During the meeting, we are discussing the progress of the project and following up on the budget to ensure that we are not exceeding the budget.

Flexibility to change/adjust your plan – in any project you will have surprises and things will not work 100% as per the plan (we already said it is a reality show, didn’t we?). As the project manager, you need to have some flexibility to adjust the plan in order to achieve your goals while maintaining the overall timelines and budget. There is no recipe for that (I wish there was). You will need to keep calm and just weight things as you go, prioritize and check what is important and what less important. Make sure to insist on the critical items and shift around the items that are not holding the project and will not impact the timeline and the budget.

We would like to emphasize that most people will not become experts in their first project. Managing such a project requires some skills and a lot of practice. Make sure to learn from your mistakes and improve for your next project.