LEADERSHIP

MASTERMIND YOUR ACTION LIST • 63
You have neither time nor budget to spend on nonessentials,
nice-to-have accoutrements, or ego-polishing shine.
For high-performance achievers, good enough is better than best.
How to Create Your Action List (WBS)
Before you jump in and start listing all the work required
in the upcoming grand adventure, take a moment and review
the big picture. Whether you’re going about this project solo,
as part of a core team, or as the leader of the whole shebang,
take a moment to gather your wits, focus on the goal, and steel
your resolve. Make sure that you and everyone on the team
understand the project’s purpose, your working assumptions,
expected operational conditions, and the flexibility or inflexibility
of the triple constraints (see Preplanning Considerations in
Even Superheroes Need a Plan). Thinking through the Project
Initiation Document and the Preplanning Checklist will
keep your team on track. (Download and freely use these MS
Word documents at www.TheMentorGroup.com/freearticles-checklists-forms.html.)
Keep your plan as simple as possible. It’s easy to allow niceto-haves
to creep into your plan at this point—especially if
your colleagues follow their moms’ advice! I always remind
myself and my team that the action listing we want is lean and
agile, not fluffy and lovable. Implementing tasks that lie outside
the project’s essential scope is risky: the project becomes
more difficult to manage, more resources must be found, the
sequence of work becomes more complex, and risks—known
and unknown—rise. I want my project to be as safe, simple,
and speedy as possible. Nonessential activities siphon time,