PLANNING AND DECISION-MAKING 1

The Importance of Planning for Better Decision-Making

Tiffany Meskimen

Arizona State University

OGL 321: Project Leadership

July 13, 2021

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Project leadership is the most crucial part of the project management continuum. It

provides a collective goal, a path to get there, and the means to successfully navigate the team to

the end of the project, all while being proactive and succinct in steering the team. The scenarios

in the Harvard Project Management Simulations will help leaders realize how to manage projects

by anticipating change from the beginning stages through the completion of the project. The

simulation has provided a glimpse of how a perfectly laid road can crumble under you if you are

not looking ahead, and how choosing another option might just get you back on the right

path…managing change. The simulation also provides an opportunity to manage, allocate, and

motivate resources available to us in the best manner. In this paper, I will look at the effects of

planning and the importance of decision-making and tools to help navigate a great plan.

Leadership is not management, and management is not leadership, but when leading a

project, one must find a good marriage between the two. Project management has taken on more

of a behavioral versus technical management style, lending to the need for more situational

leadership where the focus is on planning, people, and resources (Kerzner, n.d., p.377). For a

team to successfully (and happily) navigate through a project, a good leader should have great

skill in planning and a good plan for decision making. As Buede and Powell (2009) said in A

Project Manager’s Guide to Making Successful Decisions; no matter their achievements,

successful people tend to have one thing in common, effective decision-making processes. We

learn that “a planned decision process not only helps to guide and control decisions but also

influences events that occur in managing projects” (Buede & Powell, 2009, p.17). Mapping out

how decisions are made, as well as why they are made - decision context - helps drive the

outcomes of the future.

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After the first attempt in simulation B, I knew that I would have a surprise to look for,

losing team members and having a freeze on adding resources in the coming weeks. I noticed

that as I was completing the simulation again and again, I began to weigh my decisions very

early and based them on the setting or “the situation faced by the decision maker, including the

decision maker’s current status in terms of resources, obligations, opportunities, and desires”

(Buede & Powell, 2016, p.3). The decisions I was making were well thought out and planned

around the notion of getting back on track.

There are good practices to consider when planning your project. Many planning

documents focus on the allocation of resources (including people and money), adding tasks and

deadlines to tasks, and scheduling meetings to discuss the course of the project as the main

objectives to getting from beginning to end. These things are generally addressed in the project

charter, and many of the blogs on project management focus on adding graphs and charts as

visual aid for a team. However, there is an intangible that many people fail to list, let alone

identify as a part of the planning process…their own worries.

While reviewing the Project Bliss blog, many examples of planning documents and how

to best utilize them were present, as were many different planning sheets available for download.

All could be quite helpful and included the basics of who, what, why, when, how much, etc.

However, one proved to be quite different and interesting. In an “ah-ha” moment while

reviewing the results of her DNA test confirming she, in fact, has a “worrier” gene, Leigh Espy

(2016) a seasoned project manager, recognized that in all her years of planning, her incessant

worries were never added to her planning list. Yet they very possibly could have uncovered

roadblocks to proactively plan for, had she just added them to a plan somewhere.
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Leigh created a cheat sheet where she added some of her most asked questions (or

worries) that can be applied to many different projects. Espy says “it’s not a foolproof way to

keep anything from going wrong…but a least it will hopefully ease your mind that you haven’t

forgotten something critical” (2016). This is a brilliant way to validate and answer the feeling

that you are forgetting something…and many times that “something” is not tangible. This cheat

sheet is more of a list of reminders. It reminds the project manager to ask the small questions like

who else could be involved or affected, are other departments are needed, are the right resources

being used, are there other initiatives that might have the same outcome…these sorts of

questions that a worrier would stay up at night asking themselves. These are great questions to

ask, and a smart project leader might bring this list to the team for discussion and incorporation

into the project plan.

Reviewing other blogs, I also found that Project Smart provided many different tips and

solutions to effective project leadership. Caroline Brooks blogged the 5 Habits of Highly

Productive People, a list of advice on how planning, organization and being proactive help

balance leaders. An organized person generally will look forward with the thought that “if you

wish to get somewhere, you need to know where it is that you want to be, otherwise there is no

way that you will ever reach your desired destination (goal).” (Brooks, 2021). Being a highly

productive person also comes with being an organized person who makes lists (enter Espy’s new

list of the most asked questions from above.) Brooks’ suggestion to make two sets of to-do lists

is interesting and makes a lot of sense. Making a daily list is great for productivity but adding a

larger list of goals and/or deadlines helps guide your daily list in the right direction.

Brooks also talks about productive people using technology to their benefit, this could not

be truer. In a team full of highly productive people, I often see the benefits of technology. In fact,
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as a member of a team who had the primary role of providing COVID test kits to rural parts of

Arizona last year, I was insistent in using collaborative technology to keep track of the orders

and deliveries. Some members of the team are comfortable using newer and more collaborative

software, while others are a little leery. However, in our fast-moving world (government

relations for a large university), it is necessary for our team to be as technologically savvy as

possible. Moving many of our documents for different projects to a collaborative sight has

proven to be beneficial in our processes, and in turn made documents more readily available

from anywhere and from any device.

Examining the importance of planning and decision-making and finding new resources to

incorporate into my own work has been eye opening. The Harvard Project Management

Simulation is a fantastic resource to help project leaders do what is required to be successful; as

we know the definition of project leadership is to prepare and set direction for, and execute

projects in scenarios where change happens, without letting that change wreak havoc on the end

goal. With proactive and innovative planning and decision-making, and putting the right

processes and resources in place, project leaders can be successful and deliver high quality

products and services on budget, on schedule and with a happy team.

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References

Brooks, C. (2021, March 9). 5 Habits of Highly Productive People [web log].

https://www.projectsmart.co.uk/5-habits-of-highly-productive-people.php.

Buede, D., & Powell, R. C. (2009). Project manager's guide to making successful decisions.

Management Concepts, Inc. ISBN: 978-1-61344-836-6

Espy, L. (2016, June 22). Project Planning Cheat Sheet [web log]. https://projectbliss.net/project-

cheat-sheet/.

Kerzner, H. (n.d.). Project Management: Best Practices - Achieving Global Excellence (2nd

Edition). Wiley. http://site.ebrary.com/id/10366591?ppg=399