Looking for skills to help increase career opportunities or enhance current position? Then consider the importance of time, meeting, and project management skills and how gaining better control in these areas can lead you where you want to go in the business world. It may be easy to see these skills will help in current job, but how can you be sure they will apply to future opportunities? If you are skeptical, try looking at job descriptions on the various job-search websites and you will discover that most of them will require one or more of these management skills (also referred to as planning or organization skills). Think about how using these skills may be seen by others who may be able help with your desired career growth. Being able to organize yourself will be noticed by a few people within the organization. However, being able to organize others by leading meetings and projects will be visible by a wider audience.

The different managing skills related to time, meetings, and projects are not only similar in principles, but also in techniques used. Adopting one of these skills and applying the principles can progressively lead towards learning the others. An example principle would be, if you belief in the value of your individual time, it follows that you understand the value of other people’s time in groups as well. Therefore, meetings which will always involve the time of others, require proper planning and management to ensure no one feels the time was wasted. A well-planned and executed meeting can actually make most attendees feel it was well worth their time and their input was valued. Since meetings are an integral part of projects requiring team member and customer participation, it also follows that running them well will lead to more efficient project management and effective use of the time and skills of those involved.

Want more proof that these skills are related? A method that personal time management typically involves is having a written set of tasks to do and then prioritizing each task according to goals. The tasks considered of highest priority, which are those that get you closer to your goal, are given attention first and have the most time dedicated to them. In a well-planned meeting, the goal is the stated meeting purpose and the prioritized task list becomes the group’s meeting agenda followed by individual task assignments in the form of actions. Every project has a direct goal for what it is to accomplish in order for resources to be given to it. On a well-planned project, major tasks for reaching the goal are listed on a project plan and assigned to appropriately skilled people to meet their priority. Project priority then is stated as the critical path in which the tasks completion must take, as well as the start and finish dates assigned to each task.

Now that you know having these skills may help increase your career potential, consider what you need to do to develop them. Do you need training or an easy-to-use tool? Is there someone who can mentor or coach you? Should you closely observe meeting leaders for pointers or volunteer for more projects to increase planning skills? Think about the importance of time, meeting, and project management skills for your career growth and then plan accordingly.

Copyright 2006 Shirley Lee. All Rights Reserved.

Shirley Lee is a consultant who helps organizations increase employee and system capacity to produce results. More information on Shirley and the option to sign-up for a free productivity newsletter are available on her website at: http://www.geocities.com/slee_rightfit/.

For a visual representation of how these 3 management skills, plus the additional time saving aspect of workspace organization, interconnect please see the diagram located from "Wizard of When" link on Shirley's website. In the diagram, the arrows represent how one planning skill can help to build or improve another. A two-way arrow indicates having a skill can help with other skill and vice versa. A one-way arrow indicates that the skill the arrow goes from helps with the skill at the arrows point. Some information in this article has been adapted from the “Wizard of When - a Series on Planning” which contains training on units shown in the diagram. The series is copyrighted © 2003 by Shirley Lee, All Rights Reserved.

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