Summary: Getting Things Done: We are in the middle of a 3 part series on Getting Things Done for Project Teams. As you probably know by now, GTD is an essential tool for personal productivity. We are sharing with you, however, the lessons we’ve learned in applying GTD in a team environment. The principles and habits remain the same. What changes are the kinds of tools you use and the way you use them. If you are already a GTD fan, take the next step and get the same productivity breakthrough with teams that you are getting in your personal life. A wonderful payoff is in that project teams demand so much of our daily attention, that when you apply our methods you will receive yet another breakthrough in personal productivity, not just team productivity. GTD Template – Team Email Format GTD Template – Master Action List for Team Lead Show Notes BTT 044 – Download Member Content Enhanced Podcast BTT 044 – Download Member Content 5 STEPS of Getting Things Done for Project Teams: Today, we are going to begin covering the 5 steps of Getting Things Done for Project Teams. Just like in David Allen’s book, the steps remain the same: Capture Project Stuff Process Project Stuff Organize Project Stuff Review Project Stuff Do Project Stuff When it comes to GTD for project teams or for personal productivity, the largest failure is usually in the first step. We don’t actually do a good job of capturing the stuff in our lives or in our projects. Some items are in emails, others are in voice mails, most are in the heads of every person on the team – never officially written down or captured in a single, trustworthy location. If teams don’t have the habits and tools in place to make it easy to capture and communicate this stuff, everything else in your project will be disorganized and more challenging . Today, we will camp out on this first step so that you and your team get the right tools and tactics into practice. We will complete the series in part 3 by reviewing the final steps so that you have everything you need for a Getting Things Done system. 1st Step of 5: What to do and What Not To Do Surprises and requests come at you all day as a project leader and this means your team requires a single trusted mechanism outside of their heads to ensure everything gets done. Even more important, you need a way to prevent doing things that actually do not deserve your team’s precious time. Imagine the productivity gains that could come when you have your team relying on a single project collection bucket, committing to capturing next actions, and following standard communications. Picture how much less work time you would need to invest as the project leader if you were able to attend fewer meetings because you knew the actions and ideas were being captured in a fail proof way. Think what you could do with the extra time if your team was as committed to the GTD system as you are. This is the productivity increase that boils up when your team is following the GTD standards we will present in today’s show. If you are saying, “Not my team – I’m on top of all the details,” I would ask, “How much work is it taking?” The answer will be much more than is necessary. “The goal of GTD is to free you from things you don’t really need to be doing, so that you can do what you should be doing!” Some Actions you will learn on how to capture everything as a project team: 1. Begin teaching your team to collect everything in a single format 2. Set up an email account for this specific project – do not use email the way you are using it today 3. Train your team to use the format for communications: Summary, Action, Detail 4. Use the Parking Lot method instead of minutes during meetings 5. Maintain the master action list where all the stuff is filtered into Tell us some ways that you personalize this for your team.For [...]
