How to finish more ...

Have you ever wondered why they call it an open points list? Those long excel files project managers like to create when their Jira board starts looking messy?

Now Excel is a powerful and diverse tool, but honestly, if your project manager starts capturing tasks in one, it’s time to sound the alarm. Not because OPLs are per say a bad thing, but because they usually get abused.

Anyone who’s worked in an old-school, right to left project management environment will probably agree that OPLs get longer in course of the project. Why is that? Well it’s because many of us are either scared of closing points off or simply not using those OPL “Task lists” to tell us which tasks to work on.

If you ask me, it’s because we don’t call them “Closed Points List”. We’ve known for years in production areas that measuring how much waste is produced will actually increase the number of waste parts, whereas measuring the number of good parts produced will do the opposite.

Just like looking at the pavement when cycling will make you fall off your bike, it’s part of our psychology to create more of what we focus on.

I’m lucky to work in the very motivational world of OKR these days, but I cut my teeth back in the day helping teams working on big projects with big problems get back on track and deliver their key targets.

You may think I did this by kicking people to do more, but that could not be further from the truth. If you ever find yourself in a fix, just ask your team to commit to finish 5-10 important tasks in the next 7 days and do that repeat that exercise every Monday for a couple of months. You’ll soon find your project is back on track.

The secret is starting less will help you finish more and that is also at the core of the OKR methodology.

If you’d like to know more about this psychological effect, buy my book or call us….