When it comes to managing our purpose, our goals, multiple projects, competing priorities and the tsunami of to-dos, emails and other communications that tumble out of them, I am relatively ‘Tool Agnostic’.

Sure, a lot of our client work focuses on helping their people implement and sustain best practice workload management through established business tools like Microsoft Outlook, Lotus Notes, ACT!, Salesforce  et al. However, if we are to create clarity and control over all these competing priorities, next actions, to-dos and tasks, there are far more fundamentalal things to get a grip on before we look at what tool to use, as you can see here

A few of these fundamental things are:

  1. Know and commit to your purpose for the endeavour.
  2. Keep the control and execution process as simple as possible to implement and sustain.
  3. Use fewer tools and integrate them better to get stuff done
  4. Review, revise and re-enthuse regularly along the way to maintain and improve upon momentum.

I was cornered at a recent TVSMC meeting by the excellent Benjamin Ellis, who, along with Jim Anning has created Milestoneplanner, the latest release of which I am happy to see now ties Next Actions to Milestones. This enhancement brings it closer to, what I consider to be, the ideal for a Project/Goal-to-Action organiser. It is absolutely usable right out of the box, especially within more informal worksharing teams and organisations. It may not be suitable – yet – for larger organisations using Microsoft Outlook or IBM Lotus as primary communication and scheduling tools because, as I know from direct experience with my clients, there is so much untapped potential within these programmes to support more productive priority and time management on an individual and teamworking basis anyway.

This is a fine example of an open, transparent, collaborative, yet simple web-based process tool to enable individuals and teams keep on top of agreed deliverables.  It does just enough, simply enough, to help teams share their plans, communicate on them, track deadlines, capture actions, update and deliver results relatively easily.

Check out the 2 minute video below then Download it  and experiment with it.

Remember, our legendary training and support in this and other areas of managing purpose, goals, projects and priorities is only a click away.

Finally, do connect with Benjamin, he is well worth getting to know.