Measuring Success

This week I was talking with a colleague. I commented that my calender was free of meetings for the day and that I was focusing my efforts on preparing for a significant project meeting. My colleague was surprised to learn that I did not have any meetings for the day.

He asked how this could happen. I said "I don't know. Perhaps due to intelligent prioritization, my excellent time management skills or as result of decades of project management experience?"

My colleague totally missed the point and said "Well I have meetings all day. I will invite you to some of them."

This is a common problem. We default to measuring success by activity not by results achieved. We see people actively attending meetings and assume that projects are progressing. We measure success by the number of meetings attended, which is a meaningless metric. It takes more effort to identify the results you are working towards and then measure progress towards those results than it does to observe the number of meetings that you attend.

This is no excuse for professional project managers. Activity does not indicate progress. You need to manage your time wisely and stay focused on achieving results while deflecting meeting invitations that do not require your presence. Your time is a limited resource - don't waste it.