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Part of the signature way I manage projects, teams, and businesses is to set out benchmarks and see where we are moving the needle and how quickly! This is both an art and a science, but monitoring your benchmarks can reveal truly important info about how your business operations are operating.

There are a couple key areas you need to be monitoring that will show you how well you are managing your resources (time, money, and energy). Some of these are numbers and metrics, while others are a more general sense of how your chugging along in your business.

You want to start with a solid baseline- your beginning point. That could be a specific number or metric, like your email list, or a general timeframe, like how quickly an email sequence is put together. This will help you define your next benchmark (or goal) and how you are improving the metric along the way. This sounds like a similar principle as managing velocity <<link to blog post or velocity pdf download>>, but setting benchmarks is the mark you set so as you improve velocity of tasks you can see how you are improving (or not) the benchmark.

Establish a baseline benchmark for these areas: 
Email list growth
Social platform growth
Benchmarks specific to launches or promotions
Timetable for typical content creation / social planning / misc content

When someone hires us to do a Progress Test or books a VIP Session, setting benchmarks it one of the first things we do as we analyze. Point A is so important to establish so you can get to point B, C and beyond. I want to see where you are at, then we set benchmarks based on how you got to point A and what we can forecast as your next goal.

I like to set both monthly and quarterly benchmarks so we can drill down to specifics and also see how all the benchmarks are working together during regular reviews. Like how did launches or evergreen promotions do each quarter compared to each other or the previous quarter? Or how engagement or growth of this particular month theme do compared to last month’s? How did our team react to increased (or decreased) workload?

Once we analyze all the factors and start to establish the baseline, setting the next benchmark or goal is fairly easy. You want to set the new and improved benchmark as a mark that will stretch your team but be attainable in reality. For instance, you’ve been sitting at 20% list growth, but with the right promotions this quarter your next benchmark is 35%. This helps you set your goals and helps break down what tasks or project planning needs to happen to exceed the benchmark.

You can do this a million different ways, but I find by hand or spreadsheet is the easiest. Nothing fancy, no tools or tracking devices. Just simple math and analysis.

In a nutshell, setting a benchmark gives you the mark- we make the plan of attack. As you start monitoring your benchmarks and setting new (or different ones) you’ll be able to see clearly where you need improvements and what, if any, blindspots are preventing you from exceeding that benchmark.

If you want to start getting in the rhythm of consistently analyzing your business, take this Sprint Review & Planning worksheet. You can set benchmarks on your own, but this worksheet will help you dive deep into your tasks to make sure you are staying on the right path (and make any adjustments as needed)!

I’ve been talking and talking about my maternity leave on Instagram and it’s brought up a ton of questions about how I did it since I serve a few high level clients and teams.  Since October’s theme is Behind the Scenes, I thought I’d give you a quick once over how we went about tackling the time off and what it truly entailed. Not that my life is so incredibly interesting, but because the tools, strategies, and plans can help you see how important mapping the next 90 (and beyond) are to your business.

While I’ll give you a little insight into the specifics of my maternity leave, I really want to show you the tools and strategies we implemented to help prep for and take considerable time off from my own business and take a hiatus from client work.

I approached this in 3 parts. 1) Overall planning for before, during, and after! 2) Taking care of my clients. and 3) Taking care of my own business.

First off the plan BEFORE! 

Consult the calendar!

I approached this maternity leave as its on project. I had approximate start and end dates, then worked backwards to set other milestones. I plan to take a full 12 weeks off. For my family, this is what we needed. Several factors went into this decision, but it all centered around the calendar. Which is why the first step into project planning is to consult your handy dandy calendar! 

This is no different than preparing for a vacation, business sabbatical, or even slowing down for summer. The calendar is key!

Since we work in 2 week sprints, that gave me a framework to start looking at dates.  We considered the school starting date (which is WAY earlier than last year) and I had to consider how I would slow down as we got closer to my due date.  I also knew it would be easier for me to transition back part time during the holiday season, since my clients and myself usually take things a little slower during that time.<

I ended up taking official maternity leave August 6 – November 10. I’ll return part time through the first of the year and then full blast (I will be oh-so-ready) January 2019!

Very Important Note: We had to factor in not just when I would be leaving, but when the prep and transition work needed to take place so my teams could have a good chunk of time to digest how everything would work without my active presence. I set milestones at regular intervals from April to July to be completely transparent with the teams. Which brings me to the next chunk of time!

The preparation!

Since I knew where each client stood and what on-going projects each would have during that time, I could work backwards to prepare the teams for managing #allthethings while I’m gone. This meant I had to work really hard during the spring months to have my regular work done plus focus on the project prep this summer.  I had to add in additional work blocks during the week to make sure I had specific, devoted time time to get ahead. I worked more in those months that I have EVER worked before, but it was all worth it!

Again, I used my Progress Gameplan Sheets to break down all the work, dates, and milestones so I would be prepared to make the transition.

The transition out!

When I was ready to hand over the keys and officially take my first day of maternity leave, I will admit I was pretty darn nervous! So much of my recent years had been devoted to shepherding the teams through the highs and lows of business. In many ways, their businesses became an extension of myself. I have been super invested in their success and pivotal to the expansion of each brand.

So I knew I how important the transition was. Documenting, training, hiring the right support staff, and making sure I had firm boundaries in place was very important.

Taking care of my clients!

This is where I spent almost my entire spring and summer. My clients are my work fam and I could not just leave them in the dust. I wanted to leave them feeling empowered, ready, and prepared for the time away. I also learned a lot about how I want to manage things and a few new strategic plans I will have in place for 2019.

One thing I needed to do that I haven’t always been the best at is documenting all the things I personally manage. I’m lucky to work with experts on each team I manage so I knew they could take care of their pieces of the pie, they just needed to know what that looked like without me running things behind the scenes. And I really needed to be totally transparent as to what I handled on the daily. Which ended up being so much more than I realized!

Here’s what I did and why you need to consider doing it too:

1) I took planning the next 90 days into overdrive!
Luckily, we already had most of the regular work laid out, but I needed to consider how much more (and the improvements we needed) over the next 90. So I ended up planning and forecasting for closer to 120 days!

2) Training and Onboarding videos

3) Workflow boards and preparations

4) Project Planning

Tools I used:

Your Progress Gameplan sheets
Workflow boards (on both Trello and Asana- depending on the client)
Loom

Taking care of my own business!

One thing this maternity leave made clear to me was that I did not want to spend any more weeks or months letting my own business slide or be put on the backburner. I had started down the track of creating my first digital product (Progress System: Trello Edition). Due to impeccable timing, all the pieces were coming together just about the time I would have the baby. Of course!
My hard work to create a 1-1 service suite built solely by referrals would not sell this new product. I knew that meant I needed to start growing my list again and have some sort of social media presence. Even if it didn’t sell extremely well, I didn’t want to let 3 months go by without putting it out to the world.

So I got serious about Instagram planning, finding the perfectly branded stock photos, and creating a plan my fabulous VA could implement.

I also had to wrap my head around tracking and planning triple duty for regular client work, maternity leave prep, and my own business. I had to wrangle all the tasks into Trello so I could track and keep tabs on what was getting done when. It took my project planning to next level status. I’ve never managed so many moving parts at once — and considering some of the projects we have managed that says a lot.

Since we had mapped all the milestones, projects, and dates along with specific tasks I needed an easy way to log all that info into Trello. We used a Trello card importer to systematically moved every single detail of every project plan into Trello. What I had estimated at literally 2-3 weeks minimum worth of inputting took myself + my VA a couple afternoons. Total lifesaver!

So here are the tools that made prepping my own business easier:

1) Trello Importer- what a lifesaver!

2) Airtable Instagram planner (from my VA), plus an excel printout so I could plan from hand

3) Bloguettes stock photos (they are completely on brand for me)
4) Social Curator to help fill in captions, plus her photos are pretty cute too
5) VA! She’s my backup and I love her to pieces and trust her judgement completely
I can’t tell you enough how important prepping for this leave was. I could not have done my regular work and transitioned out as easily as I did without planning the next 90+ days.  Breaking down each sprint and setting milestones is what kept us on track. All the hours spent documenting and refining 100+ workflows into Loom videos made everyone feel at ease, plus it helped us see how we needed to simplify things in the future.

What I also love about this planning is it showed me how to plan on extreme overdrive. From pen and paper to the Progress Gameplan Sheets to using the Trello importer- that allowed us to move quicker and adjust even easier.

So if you are looking at time off, simplifying things, or even just getting way ahead. . . use the tools and strategies described above and you’ll be on the right path!

“OK dream team. . . we are focusing on idea #10234 today and it needs to be completely executable in 3 – 4 weeks (ideally). Let’s bust it out team! And break!!”

Team prepares to dive in, you make the to do list, brainstorm out the copy, maybe you announce your incredible excitement over new fangled amazing idea #10234 that will be live and ready in just short of a month.

You are all in, rollin’ up your sleeves, rockin’ a top knot and have your go get ’em Pandora station on full blast.

Oh. . . snap. There’s one little problem.

The to do list is now epicly LONG and you may have over extended yourself (again)!

What to do? How to pivot, make time up, and still be close to the “live” date? 

Breath girl, I got you! This is nothing new and it is a problem that is somewhat easily fixable.

You may have missed a crucial point in developing this project: Paying attention to the 3 stages of project development. Development, Strategy, and Execution!

I know, BORING! Total snoozeville! We want to dive right in to all the fun parts and the things that light us up. But planning and executing a project (like amazing project #10234) is what will take it from ho-hum, thrown together to fantastic launch/execution/reveal!

When we here at FPM build out project plans and execution dates we typically start with the “live” date, then work backwards to set the proper timing for each stage. Some projects- like a launch of a program, completely new service, or big time reveal- need more development. While other projects – like a 3-4 part training series or new structure to your newsletter- don’t require as much development, but lean into strategy a little more.

It is important to remember a few things that will help make successful project management.

3 keys to help setup each stage for success: 

1. Knowing your team’s velocity.
2. Having a repeatable system in your back pocket.
3. Considering your personal calendar AND business calendar. (And your team’s too).

Now, let’s take a real life example and see how we break it down to build it up. <

I recently took on a project that was a relaunch of a high-end group program. We decided to rework the program from the ground up, but keep the same type format- just make it better and really niche down to our ideal customer.

This required our team to look at the program through so many lenses: Calendar and Timing, Development vs. Real Time Work, Team Members, Technology, and Systems and Workflows. Considering these factors, among others, we could break down the entire project and set each task in the specific stage.

Stage 1: Development

Your goal in the Stage 1 | Development is to frame out the entire project. You’ll want to determine dates and to break down everything you will need to create for the project. For this example: marketing, onboarding, and the actual program itself. This will show you how much you have to do and estimate how much time to dedicate to each bell and whistle.

The calendar was the first thing we looked at.  We decided when the program would start and how long it would last (6 months). This helped up have an end date to work backwards.

After we had the end date we looked back at previous cycles of this program. After much consideration, we zoned in on what features we wanted to keep and how the education would be dripped out. We broke down what types of eduction would be needed and created a rough timetable. This helped us nail down exactly what type of trainings or education we needed to supply.

Once we knew the program dates and the future education we had to consider the work necessary to market and launch a group program at this level. NOTE TO SELF: This is by far the biggest misstep I see. 

We had to consider the development of not only the program’s education, but the development of the marketing, onboarding, and launch of the program.

Considering our typical launch system (we are actually really lucky to have a repeatable system in place) we knew the general number of primer emails, soft sell, hard sell, and other emails and social media marketing that created our launch plan. That ended up being pretty much plug in play. BUT we still had to build in an entire sprint that would focus on just writing the emails, captions, and other launch content. Plus, we had a loose marketing calendar that noted our marketing and launch dates.

We spent considerable time brainstorming what exactly would make up the onboarding process, qualifying leads, and creating a system that could be prepped ahead of time.

The development of this section was pretty heavy, especially when we had to break down the dates and work backwards to ensure we had framed out the program and the marketing to our expectations.

Start here:

Step 1: Define “live” dates
Step 2: Consider marketing and launch calendar requirements or milestones
Step 3: Break down future requirements (education in this instance)
Step 4: Create the development calendar for each piece of content, marketing system, and onboarding.

Stage 2: Strategy

Your goal in Stage 2 | Strategy is to take the framework and start strategically refining your plan. This includes, WHEN you will work on each to do, polishing your marketing plan, and looking at LIVE dates vs. prep work. Plus, you’ll be able to add any new strategic ideas making sure you they fall into the decided framework you did in Stage 1 | Development.

This is absolutely when you need to firm up all your tasks in your project management system and start assigning clear due dates!

Once we developed the program calendar, marketing calendar, and general onboarding schedule in Stage 1 we had to focus on how to strategically work on the content and implement some new features. This transitioned us to Stage 2 | Strategy.

Just a note: strategy isn’t just marketing or funnel strategy, it encompasses team and resource management as well. 

Most of the educational content was being reworked and the marketing followed our typical system- but I had to determine exactly how much time was needed to actually write the content and hand off to the next person down the pipeline. We created easy templates to follow for each dripped content, which made it easy to estimate / track how much time to designate to each month’s content development.

Important note: We busted out 2 months worth in 1 sprint.

The marketing emails followed our typical pattern, which we designated to 1 week in a 2 week sprint, leaving plenty of room to work on other preparations and edits.

Here’s where the tricky part happened and where you really want to consider your resource management. We knew this program required hands-on focus as we qualified leads AND during the actual live program which meant we were going to spend considerable time doing real-time work. This meant we needed almost everything that could be done ahead of time completely done, so we could focus on the real-time work (calls, reviewing applications, onboarding, and live program features) without overextending ourselves.

We firmed up our onboarding schedule and what pieces needed to be implemented. Then we reviewed the calendar. We noted when applications and qualification calls would start, how long we needed to properly onboard accepted students, and when live calls and trainings would be done.

At first look, there was too much overlap between live calls/application reviews/live onboarding and wrapping up marketing and content development. This was NO bueno! We wanted to be ahead and make sure when things were “live” we were only focusing on that!

I went back to the drawing board and reviewed our work sprint by sprint.  I shifted a couple of dates around with the intentional focus that as live, real-time work was happening my client would not be writing content or any other task.

What I found was a pocket of tasks originally designated to be done ahead of time that we could shift out to after the program started, but between live dates of the program’s monthly calls. Remember when I mentioned we busted out 2 months worth of educational content in one sprint, that estimated and tracked velocity played a heavy factor in determining this strategic calendar shift.  

Now our resources and team management felt much more doable and we kept our goal of only focusing on live tasks when they are live, not doubling our workload with content creation. <

Now I was ready to firm up all the details and load everything into our project management software.

Start Here:

Step 1: Review your live, real-time work dates vs. prep schedule
Step 2: Make sure you consider any NEW strategic plans (funnels, additional calls or reviews, new content)
Step 3: Double check your calendar and resource management
Step 4: Have it locked and loaded in your project management system with clear assignments and due dates

Stage 3: Execution

Your goal in the execution stage is to manage #allthethings and make sure YOU are focusing on your piece of the pie. You should not have much more development or calendar shifts. Your goal is to take the work sprint by sprint and move them to the DONE! column!

Once we had the calendar up, firm dates, and everyone was up to speed on their assignments- we hit the ground running. This is also a good time to mention, I started maternity leave about the time we entered the Execution Stage. This program will start without me, but I’ll be back when they are a couple months in. So that was another layer of complexity we were up against.

BUT since we had spent so much time developing the framework, fine-tuning our program’s offerings, creating new and improved funnels, and managing our resources strategically we felt confident we could nail the execution!

There were a few things I did differently with this project that I plan to add into my own VIP project system.

I recorded a ton of Loom videos that walked through each aspect step-by-step. I actually did this for myself during development and also for team release. It was also really cool when my client and our team members Loom’d me back with questions. It made for an easier transition to the execution stage.

We also leaned heavily into our workflows and refined or added new ones for the entire team to see. This kept our systems fresh and organized!

If all these stages sound like a ton of work and your head is spinning trying to process all the content- its OK! I have a tool that will  help you break it all down to build it up. It’s called Your Progress Gameplan and it will walk you through my exact project development plan.

You’ll hit the ground running and have project #10234 executed with impeccable taste and speed! Just remember, it’s ok to go slow at first, then you’ll be able to rev up and repeat the system faster next go round!