ClearPM

What is one thing you can do to improve every aspect of your job performance?  Don't worry.  I didn't know the answer either until it happened to me almost accidentally.  I knew my end-of-year evaluation was coming up and someone tweeted an article about how you can take advantage of that review instead of just enduring it.  Those two things combined at just the right time to motivate me to do my own self-assessment.  I was so happy with the results I thought I'd share it along with my self-assessment thoughts and process on my blog even though it's not strictly a project management activity.  Maybe some other PMs will find some value or motivation in it.

Performance Review

I don't usually think of my performance review as an opportunity for improvement.  I usually think of it as an obligation that must be fulfilled as a condition of my continued employment.  I'm not planning to debate the merits of employee performance appraisals or the possible lack thereof.  My point is that by knowing mine was coming up and receiving the tweet at the same time produced something not unlike nuclear fusion (OK, it's totally unlike nuclear fusion but just go with me here).  These two nuclei joined in my mind to produce a brand new idea, something with the potential to change every aspect of my work performance and (as good nuclear fusion should) the energy to follow through on it.

Self-Assessment

I started writing about this in my previous post, "Walking on Water?  Or Dog-Paddling?"  The one thing I found that could improve every aspect of my job performance was to take an honest, objective look at how I was performing my duties as a project manager and ask the bottom line question:  Am I adding value?  My honest, objective conclusion was that I did the job in 2009, but it was little more than going through the motions.  I felt like I coasted by doing what was necessary and sufficient but not going above and beyond.  The rest of this article will describe my thoughts and the process I used to perform this self-assessment.  Some of this might seem random, which it was since I didn't have process in mind or a template to follow, but it worked for me.  Remember, the only difficult thing about this exercise is being objective which is tough when you lived through it all.

1.  Write down thoughts on how I did my job in 2009. 

This is how I started my self- assessment.  The idea I had when I started was that no one else would read it.  I was planning to use it as a self help thing and as a prompt for ideas when I was talking to my manager during my year-end review. 

I naturally (some might say obsessively) use correct punctuation and grammar and all that in my writing.  While some might just write bullet statements or a simple phrase to indicate what they're thinking, I write in complete sentences and paragraphs.  As I wrote, the overall format started to take shape.  I also tend to edit while I write so I started moving sentences around and eventually I ended up with an Introduction, Summary, and Foundational Questions.

Introduction:  A lot can happen in a couple weeks or a month or however long I might take between future readings of my self-assessment.  Basically, I thought this would be a good way to remind myself later what I was setting out to do with this self-assessment.  I also included my corporate PM "rank" (level 5 out of 6) to emphasize that I should be doing a very good job.  I should be adding value all over the place, going outside the box to find solutions or improvements, etc.

Summary:  This is where I ended up putting my basic thoughts on how I performed.  I included my overall evaluation (not good) and then some specific thoughts on why I didn't feel I performed as well as I could.  I highlighted my most significant weaknesses of the past year and some of my strengths.  I personally didn't think the strengths were as important as the weaknesses.  Some people might want the affirmation, but honestly, I can always find something I do well.  I tend to skim over or ignore places that I don't do as well so identifying those weaknesses and implementing ways to make them stronger was a key for me.

Foundational Questions:  As I wrote, I found myself asking questions of myself about the direction I wanted my career to go, did it even matter to me, or did I even want to continue in project management at all.  These questions got right to the foundations of my chosen profession so I wanted to leave them in the assessment.  I didn't spend time writing down answers to these foundational questions since, in the end, the answers were very clear to me, but I didn't want to lose track of them either.  I wanted to be able to return to them in the future.

2.  Identify the things I thought I did well (strengths) or poorly (weaknesses).  

The format of this part of the assessment changed the most over time.  I started out simply listing my strengths and weaknesses in columns, similar to a type of SWOT analysis.  As I thought about each trait, I started writing explanations about why I had chosen that particular trait and the list grew. 

Then I wondered, how do I know I considered every trait that would contribute to being a good project manager?  This is the heart of my self-assessment because, as I said, I wanted to give myself the opportunity to improve every part of my job performance.  Of course I could search the web or all the PM blogs I know and come up with a list of PM traits.  Fortunately I had asked a question on LinkedIn about a year ago:  "What traits make up the perfect PM?"  I thought I would get some kind of consensus, but I was wrong.  I got 11 responses, each listing a number of traits.  I put all the traits in a spreadsheet to keep track.  In the end, only a handful of the traits were duplicated in more than one response.  The list in my self-assessment is that list of answers from my LinkedIn question. 

If you decide to perform your own self-assessment using this model, you can update the list to include the traits you feel are important to good project management.

I decided to categorize the traits in one of four ways.  Strength and Weakness are pretty obvious.  I categorized a trait as Both if I could see where I had done it well and instances where I could have done better.  And if I felt I was OK with a particular trait I marked it Neither.  In other words I didn't recognize it as something that made me special or something that needed focused effort to improve.

3.  Figure out ways to improve on my weaknesses.  

This would be my Improvement Plan or goals.  I think this is the most important part of the assessment, though I couldn't have done this part without the preceding parts.  The key value add of this whole exercise is that I come out of it with clear, specific ways to improve my job performance.

Again, this isn't a particularly difficult thing to do.  I just took the weaknesses I had identified and asked myself, for each one, what can I do to address that problem? 

Some of the answers I came up with have specific, measureable tasks that I can perform.  I can look at these at specific points in time and determine if I'm doing them and how well. 

Some of the other answers are just reminders to follow the company's PM processes better.

Some of the answers apply to more than one weakness so I didn't duplicate them.  I just wrote "See xxxxx" to tell me where the improvement step was for that weakness.

Overall I'm happy with these improvement goals/steps.  For the daily, weekly, monthly recurring items, I already have them on my calendar so reminders pop up.  No guarantee that I won't just ignore the reminder, but I do find that the reminders are helpful.

Whether this is something unique that I've done or if I've just been blind to this little self-help activity all these years, I found some value in it, and I hope you found some in this article.  If you want to try this for yourself, here's a template you can use to help you get started.  Feel free to download and modify it to fit your needs.  I'd love to hear if you perform some type of self-assessment even if you don't use this format.  Does the process add value to you?  Does it help you perform your PM job better?