The Money Files

Got a new project? Typically, at the beginning of the year (if it’s your financial year starting as well) we end up with newly-approved projects and stakeholders who are raring to go. But what are we ‘going’ towards? That’s where goal statements and objectives come in.

It’s really important to set objectives so you’ve got something to hold the team accountable for. They act as your North star when making decisions as well: does the decision help you get closer to the objective? If yes, then it’s a good direction to be going in.

Let’s talk about goals (and I’m using goals and objectives kind of interchangeably here, although you might have specific in-house terms for them – generally goals are broader, objectives are more specific, but use whatever vocab suits your team).

A strong goal statement should:

• Include a clear outcome.
• Define metrics for success.
• Mention the deadline.
• Specify the responsible owner.

That all sounds straightforward, but it’s important to avoid these mistakes:

Being too vague or too broad: Having broad goals is OK, but when they are too non-specific your team won’t know exactly what they mean or how they are supposed to translate into jobs or deliverables they are responsible for.

Conflicting or unrealistic goals: People aren’t stupid and they’ll quickly realise that they’ve been given objectives that clash or that feel impossible.

Ignoring input from the team: Your colleagues are the people who will be delivering on these goals and they won’t feel the same level of ownership if they are simply given the goals.

You can address these challenges by:

• Making sure goals, objectives and targets are at a suitable level of detail so that people know what is expected of them.
• Aligning goals for your project with other goals across the organisation, so you avoid conflicting priorities and clashing objectives.
• Working with the team to gather their insights, concerns and considerations so that goals are co-created for the project and there is a strong sense of ownership for what is going to be achieved.

Writing goal statements

One way to get the team to help with the creation of goal statements is to work together to agree what it is that you want to achieve (or what the project will deliver) and then drafting some statements together.

A technique that might work for your team is where you present them with a few badly written goal statements and ask them to improve them. Do some sample statements as practice before they begin on the ones that are project-specific.

For example:

• Badly-written: “Improve cycle time.”
• Better: “Improve cycle time by 5 days for Product X by digitalising the invoicing process and training existing staff.”

Once you’ve got a few on a whiteboard, they will see what is expected of them and be able to craft their own goal statements. To be honest, most of the professionals I’ve worked with wouldn’t need much of a steer to start drafting goal statements from scratch – once you’ve worked in projects for a couple of years, you get used to writing objectives!

So give your team an appropriate level of support without it feeling patronising, and draft some great objectives and goals to get 2025 off to a strong start!

You’ve done your objective setting for the year, you’ve met direct reports and your line manager to discuss your corporate objectives. But did you include a personal development plan in your discussions? If not, now is a good time to be thinking about what you want to achieve professionally over the next 12 or so months – beyond those objectives you have to hit for work.

There is growing demand for project management skills, and staying current is more important than ever, especially if you’ve been around projects and delivery for a while. For example, I used to go to networking events and conferences a lot, and that was a great way to meet people, share ideas and learn new topics. Then I had kids and moved out of London and now it’s not so easy to get into the city for networking breakfasts or evening seminars.

I went to a conference last year and it was really interesting, and good to find time to do things for myself. It was a learning opportunity but also a way to re-energise myself about the profession and make a renewed commitment to professional development.

So, if you’re in the same position and want to look at what you could do to build your career and develop professionally, here are some ideas.

Take a certificate

Even if you don’t technically need one, it’s always good to expose yourself to different teaching methods and different tips. I took a RAID certificate this year and I got a couple of comments like, “what did you need to do a course on that for?” but I did learn new things and it was interesting to see how other people use their RAID logs.

Take a course

You don’t need to commit to a certificate (i.e. an exam) if you don’t want to. Even a short course would be a good start. PMI has a range of free training courses covering AI in project management and it’s worth seeing what is out there. 

Get a mentor

I mentor project managers and I know from what they’ve said to me that it’s a great way to learn new skills and have a safe space to try out ideas. If you are an early career professional, look into what mentoring schemes are on offer from your company, or find an independent mentor, or use the mentoring programmes from your local PMI Chapter. There really are plenty of people out there who will be prepared to help you.

Go to a networking event

Don’t feel like committing to learning or an ongoing professional mentoring relationship? Then how about just taking the small step of going to a networking event in your local area? Show up, listen to the talk, say hello and make small talk to the people next to you and leave it at that. You’ll feel more confident for having tried something new and you might learn something at the same time!

There are so many choices. Whether you are extrovert or introvert, prefer webinars or meeting in person, want to commit to a 6-month programme or get your training done in a lunch time, there is the option for you. Block half an hour in your diary now to identify some development opportunities that would work for you and help you get closer to your overall career goals. And then go for it!

If you didn’t do it at the end of last year, now is definitely the time to acknowledge and celebrate project successes – things you did really well last year as a team. And it doesn’t matter how big they are, every small step in the right direction should be marked if you can!

Why celebrating wins is important

I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that when a senior leader recognises the work you’ve done, it has a positive impact on morale and motivation. I can’t be the only one who thinks, “Ooh, I’ll file that email away for my end of year review.” That’s what you want to create: a sense of, “they think I’ve done a good job.”

Not everyone needs to be praised all the time, but celebrating wins also helps reinforce behaviours that are positive and shows that people are watching!

The biggest challenges I hear from project managers is that there isn’t enough time to celebrate success, and they don’t know what’s worth celebrating – is it just project completion? Well, it doesn’t have to be.

Here are some examples of project-related wins:

• Finishing a project (obviously)
• Meeting key milestones
• Signing a contract with a vendor
• Overcoming a major challenge, hurdle or issue
• Taking delivery of part of the equipment required
• Starting the work (good if you are literally breaking ground or clearing out a space – take before and after photos!)

Those are all tangible achievements but there are intangible ones too, such as resolving a problem with creative thinking, innovation, collaboration (especially if you can bring virtual colleagues into this one), and so on.

You can also think of wins that are specific to a particular person, for example, marking their one year anniversary on a project, or starting or completing a relevant training course.

How to do the celebrating

This is another area where people get stuck, because (surprise, surprise) there often isn’t any budget for marking celebrations during the project (and often not a project completion either, to be honest).

If you can, put some budget aside to allow for employee recognition. If that isn’t possible, tap into any employee recognition schemes that exist within the organisation and lean on those. Call out colleagues for recognition within team meetings, send digital cards or simply an email of thanks.

Record the successes

One thing you can do is create a ‘wins report’ which will sit alongside your lessons learned report at the end of a project as a reflection of all the cool stuff you achieved and how that work was acknowledged throughout the project.

If you’re in the kind of organisation where you want to share success stories with clients when you are pitching for work, you could also use your wins report as input to those.

Starting out 2025 with a reflection on what you achieved in 2024 is a good way to generate some momentum for the first few months and help people feel good about coming back to work after the festive break! How are you going to take this idea and bring it into your meetings over the coming weeks?

OK, this might not be relevant to everyone reading, but sometimes project managers are left with ‘spare’ budget in December. How are you going to make use of any available funds – assuming you are not under pressure to give them back – to maximise project value. Here are some ideas.

Conduct a year-end financial review

First, make sure your budget trackers and up to date, and that everything that should have been accounted for has been added on. That will give you a true picture of your actuals, so you can review the financial status of the project, including how much budget is left and what key areas need funding.

If you need to move money around, talk to the finance team so that the right amounts can be journalled to the right budget lines to tidy up your accounting.

Prioritise high-impact investments

Next, think about where you could use leftover budget in the remaining weeks of the year to make the most impact. That could be new tools (testing software licences are always a win), training for project team members, especially if that will help them develop skills they will need next year, or risk mitigation activities. Perhaps you can buy a few days of consultancy time that will speed up a particular task? Perhaps there are licences that need renewing, or equipment that you could invest in? Perhaps you could talk to suppliers about getting a discount if you place an order now instead of in January – many suppliers have targets to hit at year end and might be open to negotiation.

I think that spending money on training and certification is a good choice. It helps team morale as individuals see that their future is being invested in, and you get skilled team members who have the skills required to continue to support the project, or future projects. So my recommendation would be to look at investing here, in team development, if you aren’t sure what use you can make of additional funding.

If you need to buy anything, make sure to get approval and move quickly before the year end deadlines.

Don’t spend for the sake of it

We want to avoid wasteful spending. Be aware of what is going on in the rest of the organisation. For example, other projects might be struggling, and the most prudent thing is to always offer the money back to the ‘pot’ as a first point of call.

In my experience, budget that is not spent is not carried over to the new year unless it can be accrued against a committed spend. In other words, if you have got £20k sitting waiting to be spent, there is a high chance that you will lose it unless it is spent on something. Talk to your Finance team to find out whether that is likely to apply to your budget, and what they recommend you do at this time of year.

Work with Finance to reallocate funds

Talking of working with Finance – they are the guardians of spending rules and regulations, and they will help you maintain compliance and an audit trail for spend.

They will know if it is possible to carry budget over – and it might be, if your financial year does not end in December.

The start of a new year can bring intense pressure to get projects up and running quickly – have you felt that? There is often new budget available, new expectations and just the natural sense of new beginnings that comes with a new year… all adding up to a desire from senior leaders to get projects moving quickly.

That makes December the perfect time to prepare, so here are some things you can be doing this month to get ahead for January when it comes.

Review the project pipeline

Assess the projects slated for Q1 and their current status. What’s ready to go, what needs more discovery or analysis? What projects are continuing from this year that still need to complete?

Are there any critical tasks that need attention before January? You can use December to create detailed action plans for January launches, bearing in mind the holiday period and any change freeze that might affect your technical deployments.

Resource planning and allocation

How are you going to make sure that team members are ready and equipped to start strong in January? If there is new budget for training, what projects are coming up where the team could do with some training to ensure they have the skills?

Make sure people know what they will be working on in the new year, and ideally have this documented somewhere – chances are they will come back after a short break and they might have completely forgotten!

Backlog and task prioritisation

If you are anything like me, you’ve probably got a backlog of tasks from the months just gone that haven’t quite been finished. For example, I have project budget trackers that need updating, and I know I’m going to be asked for them by year end because it’s important to have the numbers sorted.

Think about what you have outstanding and prioritise what you need to, focusing on the high-impact tasks first to ease yourself into January.

Prepping tools and processes

Talk to your team about getting things set up for the new year. For us, that’s making sure there are ‘2025’ versions of in-flight projects, setting up the 2025 portfolios and making sure steering meetings are booked for the year – best to get booked into busy executives’ diaries before they are blocked!

Communication and alignment

Because nothing says ‘new year’ more than a redoubled effort at team communication! It might not last longer than February, but let’s start with good intentions, eh?

Think about what the objectives are for the coming year. Set expectations to align on goals, especially if you are starting new work or have different priorities across the portfolio.

For most of us, project work just continues into the new year, because most projects won’t have a hard stop at year end. However, it’s always an opportunity to remind people of what the goals and objectives are, and how these fit with strategic priorities.

Planning ahead in December can help you hit the ground running in January, so you can get back to work after the festive break. I know, the “festive break” is really just a few days, but emotionally and mentally it feels different, don’t you think, because we will be ticking over into 2025?