Folding time - 3 things in 10 minutes

The other week we promised you the 5Ps #PET. A great tool to get the team aligned on any change you have to do. But first. How do you normally start a project? A meeting to discuss it? Someone volunteered to then write maybe a project brief? A meeting to discuss the brief before everyone sending comments/track changes until it becomes a colour festival with lots crossed out and hard for anyone to make sense of? We are pretty sure you are all too smart to do this but whatever you do the 5Ps will help you be even better.

Gather the team. What is the Purpose of what you are trying to do? If you already did a GapLeap (see previous post) this will help inform the purpose.

Then what are the Principles? Who are the People (key stakeholders)? What is the Process (you can miss this out just now if it's still a little foggy or a quest (see post on change types)? And most most importantly what does success look like (Performance)? This is key to make sure we all know why this is a valuable project to do (think of all those projects you heard about that went on and on and fizzled out because they had no clear definition of success to keep the team focused on the prize.)

Get the team to write first before reading through the story. This will help get all the ideas and thoughts out (supporting diversity of thinking). Check in with individuals one by one at the end (we call it SpinCasting) - is everyone happy? You have, in 10 minutes developed together a project brief with ZERO track changes. Can you imagine the time saved? Next you might want to think about communicating what the project is about to others. Guess what? The 5Ps is your communication. And then you might need to craft a careful email to some of the more tricky stakeholders to get them on board. Guess what? The 5Ps is the carefully crafted email. Because of the structure and the lack of 'emotion' it can be used for all 3 things. So not only did it only take 10 minutes. But you did 3 things at once. We call it folding time.

How do you fold time?