You’ve probably heard of Stephen Covey’s bestseller, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. And maybe you have read it! It identifies seven habits that can help you be highly effective. They are as helpful for project managers as they are for everyone else.
The 7 habits are:
- Be Proactive
- Begin with the End in Mind
- Put First Things First
- Think Win-Win
- Seek first to understand, then to be understood
- Synergize
- Sharpen the Saw
I made a video drawing Project Management lessons from them.
But What Habits will Make You a Highly Successful Project Manager?
In this article, I want to describe my own list of seven Project Management habits. So, you will read about:
- The Value of Good Habits for Successful Project Managers
- Two Critical Habits I’ll Assume All Successful Project Managers Have… Do You?
- My Seven Habits for Highly Successful Project Managers
- How Long Does it Take for Successful Project Managers to Form New Habits?
Let’s start by understanding why habits are so valuable.
The Value of Good Habits for Successful Project Managers
The power of developing good habits is that they take a helpful behavior and move it towards being automatic. When you have good habits, you can just follow them, almost without thinking. And that frees up you attention to focus on other important tasks.
So, habits amplify how effective you can be and, therefore, how successful your project management practices are. To summarize, habits require little conscious intervention – so your good habits:
- make doing the right things easy
- free up mental capacity for creativity and problem-solving
Two Critical Habits I’ll Assume All Successful Project Managers Have… Do You?
I want to assume two important habits that you may already have. If you don’t, start with these.
For a successful project manager, I consider them to be non-negotiable. Without these, I think you’ll fail to make any sort of worthwhile career out of project management – or anything much else.
Always Act with Complete Integrity
The habit of speaking honestly and dealing fairly with people is an obvious one to most of us. But there are some people who seem to need to think this through at each opportunity.
So, get into the habit of doing the right thing. And, where that is not clear, make it also a habit to ask, ‘what is the right thing to do?’ That is, consider what actions represent absolute integrity, and not whether to pursue them – that part should be automatic. But don’t for one minute think that this will always be an easy matter to assess.
Habit: Do what’s right: not what’s easy.
Following the Project Process
Let’s not get into which project process. Your job is to determine the approach that will give you and your team the best chance of delivering your project safely, accountably, on time, and to budget.
Once you’ve done that, you’ll follow that process – adapting it, of course, as necessary. This is about technical competence, at least, and technical excellence if you want to really succeed.
As a bonus recommendation, I have always found that documenting a process – typically, as a checklist – makes it easier to follow it without errors, gaps, or duplication.
Habit: Trust the process to deliver the results
It’s worth recognizing that a situation can change. Part of your process must be to monitor for changes and to then reassess whether you still have the right process. And, of course, if you do not, you’ll need to develop a new process.
My Seven Habits for Successful Project Managers
With those two habits under your belt, what should you focus on to build constructive project management habits that will enhance your long-term professional career?
I will offer you seven. There is no magic in the number seven (even if some cultures do see seven as a special number). I chose seven because that’s what Stephen Covey chose. At the end of the article, I will ask you for your own suggestions: What are your 7 habits for highly successful Project Managers?
Habit 1: Shift Happens! Prepare for it.
By now, I am sure many of my readers will be familiar with Tim Lister’s wise comment that:
‘Risk management is how adults manage projects’
My first recommendation is to get into the habit of thinking in terms of risk.
See the possibility of failure in every part of your plan. It’s too easy to study a plan – especially one you have created – and see the risks as variances to the plan. But what about sudden bends or alternate routes?
Successful project managers have a cluster of risk-related habits that complement one another:
- Looking for problems and planning how they will deal with them.
- Examining data for threats to your project.
- Monitoring the environment for new threats.
- Speaking with stakeholders and garnering their perceptions of risk – and identifying where their opinions are sources of risk.
- Constantly working on their risk register. Review outstanding risks on a regular cycle and push constantly for progress.
Without action, a magnificent risk register is nothing more than Exhibit A in your project post mortem.
Habit: Make active risk management a priority.
Habit 2: People Make Projects Tricky. Always Listening
I have my own variant on Tim Lister’s maxim. If project management is how adults manage projects, then:
‘Stakeholder engagement is how sophisticated adults manage projects’
Your stakeholders have the capacity to make or break your project.
So, communicating with them must be right at the top of your priority list. There’s another assertion that I agree with;
‘Project Management is 80 per cent communication.’
That communication splits three ways.
- Some goes to your governance tiers, your boss, client, or sponsor.
- Some to your team and colleagues.
- But the majority of your communication will be with stakeholders.
You need to inform, consult, recognize, cajole, and persuade. And so much more. So, the one habit that makes all of this easier, that wins their respect, and feeds your insights is simple:
Habit: Always be listening to your stakeholders. Day in, day out.
Habit 3: There’s Always Too Much: Find the Big Lever
Projects are big, complex endeavors, with lots of moving parts. They can suck you in and drain your energy. You will never have time to do everything you like to do, much less everything you could do. Prioritization and focus are what will give you the headspace to succeed. That said…
There is one thing that a project manager craves, above all else: Control
If you think about it, that’s the job of a project manager: to bring control to the messy, chaotic, uncertain, changing environment that is a project. And there is one thing I figured out very early in my career as a project manager, which I think made all the difference.
Every project is different (that’s not my big insight).
The implication of this is that each one has different priorities. And this means that there are different things, in each one, that can make a big difference.
For each project, there will be one or two levers that give you maximum control over your project. Make them the focus of your monitoring and control. When you find the right levers and learn how to work them, everything else will fall into place.
Habit: Find and focus on the levers of control.
Habit 4: You are ‘Today’. Default to Delegation
Congratulations. You’re a project manager. I hope you will have a long and successful career. But you got here.
What about those who are behind you on the journey?
You may represent ‘today’, but they are the promise of ‘tomorrow’.
Developing them is a priority of leadership. And doing so can make use of one of the most flexible, multipurpose tools you have: delegation. No project manager will be truly successful until they learn to delegate effectively. It confers so many benefits, it should be your standard do-to solution to getting things done.
Delegation frees you up for your most valuable single role: thinking.
It engages your team members and motivates them with challenging work and the knowledge that you trust them.
But crucially, for tomorrow, it’s the way most of us learn best: by doing the things we need to learn. Delegation is a premium tool for developing your people. And that does not just benefit them. It builds resilience into your project and, therefore, mitigates some of the substantial risks you are responsible for.
Habit: Delegate good, challenging work throughout your team.
The basics of Delegation: Delegation: How to Get People to Do What They Say They Say They Will
How to Delegate without Stress
Multiply your Effectiveness, Build Team Resilience, & Increase Your Team’s Motivation.
Check out our full course on delegation skills. In this course, you’ll get 18 lecture modules and 7 assignments, going deep into the craft of delegation. So you’ll be able to delegate precisely and with confidence that the work will be done…
And done well.
Habit 5: The Team Delivers. Serve your People
Try not to fool yourself. Unless you’re leading a small project, where you are the whole delivery team, as well as the project manager, you won’t be delivering your project. Your team will.
In the context of project delivery, therefore, your job is simple. You have to make it as easy as possible for them to do their jobs.
You can forget about stale stereotypes of being the boss.
The habit to get into is making the coffee. Because your role is to serve your team. To provide them with the resources they need, to thrive and succeed. And also to shield them from the corporate crapulence that constantly frustrates our day-to-day efforts to get on with our work.
Habit: Practice servant leadership.
I wrote about servant leadership in an earlier article: How Servant Leadership Can Deliver Better Results from Your Project Team. This is certainly one of my seven habits.
Habit 6: Take Nothing on its Appearance. Ask Questions
Excellent projects often benefit from excellent governance, and I think there is a strong causal link. Sadly, though, you won’t always have the ability to ensure your project gets the high-quality governance it deserves.
What you can control is your part in some of the governance roles. Because good governance takes responsibility – on behalf of the organization – for strategy, oversight, and decision-making.
To play your part in this, you need to constantly be questioning, challenging, and looking for new evidence.
Avoid confirmation bias by preparing your project reports bottom up. Start with raw data every time, rather than gathering data to illustrate your main points. Seek out wise counsel, and test your ideas with experienced and senior colleagues.
Whilst cynicism can drain the energy form a project, skepticism is healthy. Challenge anything that is not supported by a mix of:
- Good data, and
- Strong reasoning
Habit: Ask questions when you don’t know or are unsure.
Habit 7: An ‘Always Learning’ Growth Mindset
Humans evolve. Successful professionals evolve faster than other people because they have an ‘always learning’ growth mindset. Get into two valuable habits that will keep you learning:
1. Invest in your own knowledge, learning, and skillset.
Read books, go to events, and take courses. Lifelong learning is more than just a CPD obligation for members of a professional body. It’s the surest route to flexible career options, fulfilment, and even good mental health.
2. Reviewing your experiences.
Are you wise? It’s not for you to say, so don’t try to answer. But here’s the interesting thing. There are some people whom others most consistently rate as being wise, the people whose opinions we seek out and value. They have one habit in common. They make time to reflect on their experience. Often, they keep a journal. They record their thought processes, their choices, their reasons, and their actions. And they also reflect on how things turned out, looking for patterns and lessons to learn
Habit: Keep learning.
More on Growth Mindset: What is a Growth Mindset? | Video
How Long Does it Take for Successful Project Managers to Form New Habits?
Years ago, I was taught that 14 days of consistent behavior is enough to form a habit. There is also an assertion that it takes 21 days. This may be a myth (see research by Lally, van Jaarsveld, Potts, & Wardle, 2010), but habits do form.
66 Days
The research suggests an average of 66 days is more realistic, but it depends on you, your motivation, and what habit you’re trying to form.
But whether it takes 66 days or 166 days, this is a small effort to commit to a life-changing habit. And if you want a long and successful career as a project manager, then I suggest it’s a worthwhile effort to invest.
I reckon you can make all seven of my recommendations into lifelong habits in under two years. After all, 66 x 7 = 462. That’s a shade over 46 working weeks for 2 years.
The Question that Remains…
Which Habit will you practice first?
What are Your 7 Habits for Highly Successful Project Managers?
I would love to hear the habits you would recommend. Please put them in the comments, and I will look forward to reading and responding to each one.
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This article is adapted from an earlier article I wrote for ProjectManager.com.
