Let’s shine the spotlight on your project management system. I get the question a lot about which is the best. My response always goes along the lines of: what works for you that you will use is the best for you. There is no one “best” on the market.

A project management system is used to track your tasks, timelines and responsibilities of a project. For example, you have an event coming up. You need to use project management to make sure all the tasks around the event, from beginning to follow-up afterwards, are accounted for, assigned out to someone and completed. 

If you are a one-person show and you do it all alone, your project management system can be something as simple as a word document, paper planner, spreadsheet, or just your calendar. You are the only one accountable to everything you have to do any day. I will say, even if you are doing it all yourself, you need to write it down somewhere. You will become overwhelmed and exhausted trying to keep it all in your head all the time - and you may lose sleep. 

When you are ready to bring on a Virtual Assistant or other team member, it’s time to start looking at shared project management systems. Again, there is no “right” system for everyone. Make a list of what you want it to do for you and your business. Your list may have some of  these things on it:

• Track projects separately

• Track tasks separately within each project

• Assign tasks to different team members (might be only you at the beginning)

• Communicate within each task

• Track time spent on each task

There are many systems out on the market (okay, many, many, many) and it’s often hard to decide. Any business who is using a system will gladly talk to you about the great system they use. Some of the ones you will hear are Trello (creatives love this one), Asana, Click-up (recent market leader), Monday, etc. I use a system called Teamwork. I started using it about 8 years ago. I know the system, my team knows the system, and it does everything I want it to do, I call it my second brain. Everything in my head, on my notes, in my email inbox goes into Teamwork and is assigned to someone. This is what allows me to sleep at night and not worry about my business. If I get busy and have notes, a full email inbox and my head spinning with FB messages and texts I don’t want to forget about, it makes me crazy. Ever had that feeling? If I do, I know the issue is with me not putting everything into a system.

I find that entrepreneurs who are resistant to taking the time for task management stop their business from growing. They are unable to experience leveraged growth if the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing every day. Project management saves time, solves a lot of issues with team communication, and gives you an accurate picture of your business for leverage and growth. 

As David Jenyns said in Systemology, “[having the system] reduces anxiety around taking leave, provides business owner confidence and gets you one step closer to complete business reliability.”

Embrace a system and let me know how it goes for you. If you’d like some help finding the right system for you and your team, I’d love to chat with you. Jump on office hours or schedule a call.