Always have a list of your projects and always know the current state of those projects. Be prepared with this information for any meeting and keep tabs on how the team is progressing through those items. You look sharper if you always prepared and you can more easily defend your teams work if you know the amount remaining. I had a family friend who would keep his todo list on an index card in his dress shirt pocket and everyday would slide a new card in. He’d work through these as reminders of what he needed to focus on and what he needed to get done in the day and he always knew what he was supposed to do next. Quarterly goals are a little bigger than a daily todo list, but the idea of keeping progress and the next action fresh in your mind is very applicable. If you aren’t prepared to do the next project (or task) then you leave a gap for someone else to tell you what to do.

I really believe that having a plan and executing that plan are under-appreciated skills. Being fully in control of timelines and scheduling create a wide moat between okay management and great. You are doing what you said you’d do - you’re showing that you are a person of your word and that you can follow through on what is assigned (or self assigned) to you. I see this a marker of respect and success. However, you have to communicate that plan and over-communicate. I’ve lost credibility for not over-communicating a plan and changes to that plan enough in the past.

So…

• Create a plan far enough in advance
• Know how that plan is progressing every day (or hour)
• Be flexible and over-communicate when things change

I didn’t use AI for this, but did plug it into a word counter/spell checker. Took a while to write this one. Compound words with the - are intense I guess