- There's no bones about it,
high performing teams have a lot of work to get done.
And you, as their leader,
need to make sure you have the right resources
and understand what types of resources you need
to achieve those tasks.
Now, a lot of times we start with
here are the resources I have,
therefore, here are the tasks
I'm going to go out and pursue.
That's completely backwards.
The tasks needs to define the resources that you need.
So start with the list of initiatives
and then prioritize.
You won't be able to get all of that work done
at the same time.
So you have to think through,
if this is my vision of what I'm trying to achieve,
and here's the strategy for how
I'm going to achieve that vision,
here's the sequence of initiatives
that I need to pursue.
There may be dependencies.
Initiative one has to get done before initiative two.
By laying out that clear prioritization,
you're going to be able to build a resource plan
that will make sense.
Take that prioritization list
and build a bottoms-up forecast
of the resources you're not going to need.
For each initiative, lay out the resources
that that initiative is going to need
to be successfully executed.
Lay those resources out
in terms of specific skillsets.
Maybe on this project I need people with coding skills,
and on this project I need people
with operational and project management skills.
So for each initiative, lay out those skills.
Lay out the other types of resources you'll need.
For every single initiative, being able to lay out
a specific resource plan
to achieve that initiative successfully.
Next, in terms of building your bottom-up forecast
for resources, you have to look at business as usual.
We're running the organization day to day
in addition to pursuing new initiatives.
A lot of times we forget,
there's a base level of resources
we need just to get our daily work done,
looking at meetings, responding to emails,
doing reports, performing tasks
that that team has to deliver on every single day
as part of that team's mission.
Once you've laid out the business as usual resource needs
and the initiative resource needs,
then you can start developing
that higher level resource plan.
You'll stack those up and take
here are my business as usual initiatives
and resource needs,
then I'll layer on top of that
the top party initiatives and say,
here's the resources I'll need
to achieve all of this work.
By having that clarity
of what level of resourcing you'll need,
you're going to make sure that your teams
have the resources that are required
to perform the work and do it well
and do it properly, and you're also going to be able
to articulate to hire what resources
you're going to need as you make your case
for gathering those and providing them to your team
so they can be successful.