STRESS DURING A PROJECT? PRIORITIZATION AND DELEGATION ARE THE CLUE!

As a project manager you know the issue: stress during a project. Time and cost pressure, guide your employees and be available for questions are just a few examples. To complete the project successfully and without stress, prioritization and delegation (please find our blog article about employee delegation here: I can do that too - Why staff delegation is important) will help you.

We know the challenges that project managers have to deal with, from our own experience. Hundreds of emails a day are not an exception. The to-do list is getting longer and it already contains countless tasks. These difficulties are not uncommon in the project life.

For every task we ask ourselves two questions:

1. How important is the task?
2. How urgent is the task?

Based on these two questions, you can derive four simple strategies:

• Important and urgent: I, the project manager, have to deal with this task. The risk of failure and hence the negative impact on me is high. Perhaps I have to call in an expert who can optimally support me.
• Urgent but not (that) important: I delegate the task to known experts in this field. It is important that I stay tuned in the subject in order to understand how the problem is solved.
• Important but not urgent: It depends on the topic. It is possible to put the task on hold and to do it by myself later on or, to delegate it with a precise timing.
• Not important, not urgent: This task can (for now) be ignored and does not need to be delegated. Under certain circumstances, it can become important, then it is back on the radar and can be re-evaluated.

The result of such prioritization is that of countless emails at least 50% can be deleted and more can be delegated to fulfil them. The remaining can be taken care of completely focussed by yourself and ensure the control of the available working time.