Engaging With Work That Matters

Mark Mullaly is president of Interthink Consulting Incorporated, an organizational development and change firm specializing in the creation of effective organizational project management solutions. Since 1990, it has worked with companies throughout North America to develop, enhance and implement effective project management tools, processes, structures and capabilities. Mark was most recently co-lead investigator of the Value of Project Management research project sponsored by PMI. You can read more of his writing at markmullaly.com.

  Career Development   Schedule Management  

If there is one essential truth of being a project manager, it is this: You never run out of work.

There is always something to be done, and something more after that. Once you get past the meetings, you get to the deliverables. But in the background is the management, the communications, the administration and the things that you personally care about.

So, let me ask a question. Those personal things, the things that you are passionate about, that you believe are really important, and that could make a significant difference: How often do they rise to the top of your to-do list?

In fact, let me add some follow-up questions. When was the last time you got to spend any significant time working on them? How much mindshare do they occupy? Are they the first thing that you focus your attention on, or are they the last?

The challenge with the things that we care about is that they are important. Their downfall is that they are not urgent. This is the tyranny of what is known as the Eisenhower Matrix. It is a structure that everyone knows, even if they do not recognize it by that name. Popularized by Stephen Covey in his landmark book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (astonishingly celebrating its 31^st year since publication), it places all work into a two-by-two matrix defined by importance and urgency.

At the intersection of important and urgent we …

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