RE: Where Have All The Hours Gone?

Alright — Phillip, Rolf and I have been having a conversation about whether personal time management training is more important for not-for-profits than project management training, given that (to quote Phillip):

Initially, I thought we were debating this in terms of whether not-for-profits could or should put (to quote Phillip again) "traditional, top-down project management processes into practice." Red herring! Turns out we're debating whether personal time management training is more important than project management training for not-for-profits given that (again, says Phillip) "...many people don't have an accurate picture of their available time." Ahem. Alright, then!

I agree that understanding available time is critical to getting things done, especially when you're working on a number of things at once (and as not-for-profit staff always are). And I do recommend looking at David Allen's book — at the very least, his time-management-as-martial-art metaphors are very cool ;-)

The point I'll make in this post is this: very often, when folks working for not-for-profits are overextended and/or unable to manage their time effectively, the root cause is organisational (i.e. cultural), not individual. Culturally, not-for-profit organisations need to understand and value the concepts fundamental to good project management before individual staff are even in a position to manage their time effectively. It's ironic, but many not-for-profit organisations working for sustainability often do so in a very unsustainable way.

An example: when work is planned, effort estimates for individual tasks should be provided by the people who are going to perform those tasks, and not by the individuals/ teams/sponsors who may need the work done.

projectmanagement, timemanagement, training, nptech, importantprojects, community bandwidth, phillipsmith, rolfkleef, webofchange