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Hi everyone, here is Ricardo Vargas and this is the 5 Minutes Podcast. Today, I would like to talk about chaos and how we manage projects in chaos. And that is the reason why I decided to record this; of course, we are living in a chaotic scenario by all means, but this is mostly because I had a wonderful conversation recently with Oleg Konovalov, and he is an expert, a brilliant professional, and an expert in visionary leadership. And he wanted to talk to me about this concept of chaos in projects and in the project environment. And we discussed it about many topics. But one thing that we both agree on is that when we are in chaos, noise bends reality. You know, we see so much noise in the middle of everything that our sense of what is true, what is real, and how we should act bends reality. It's, I would say, in some ways contaminating the real intent. And we need to be able to see beyond the problem. It's like, imagine you are in the soil, and there is a massive thunderstorm that is completely chaos in your life down in the soil. But if you are able to go up and you are able to cross these clouds, you can see a clear sky. You can see a much better way to understand the meaning of the project you are doing. And I want to share with you five tips. And these tips are tips that I use when I'm handling this type of chaotic project that is probably part of my life now and probably part of everyone's life.
And the first tip I want to give is to embrace uncertainty. Accept. Just accept that chaos is part of your process. It's not a temporary thing. Maybe your project is temporary, but the chaos is not temporary, you know. It's just changing every single day, every time. So it's not like a thunderstorm where the sun will come back, and the sky will be clear. No, it's a permanent situation. So, you need to embrace this. You cannot fight and try to control everything. And you know and have certainty about everything. Because this is not hard, this is just impossible. The second one is to prioritize ruthlessly. It means that you need to focus on the most critical tasks and drop all the noise around them. And this will help you to make sure you are delivering what you need to deliver in the best way. The third tip is to stay agile. And, of course, here, I'm not talking about agile methods. I'm talking about the mindset of agility. Be flexible and adjust plans without losing your sight of the goal. It means that you need to be agile, adapt, and reinvent, and you need to be flexible to handle this uncertainty. And the fourth one, it's all about communication. You need to overcommunicate. And when I say overcommunicate, don't wait until you have the final information and the perfect one to inform other people.
This will not work. You need to overcommunicate even if you do not have the full information. If you do not have the full information, that's life, you know that's life. You need to update partially with what you can. And last but not least, just keep calm and do your work. And why? I'm saying this because in a chaotic environment, one of the things we see a lot is when people lose control of the situation. So it's like you imagine you are sailing, and you have no control over the situation, and then you feel that you are completely lost. Just keep calm. Think as a project manager that there are a lot of people who are relying on you, and if you panic, you will spread this panic among the key stakeholders like fire. So, you need to keep calm and understand that your attitude will set the tone. You need to stay composed and solution-oriented, even with massive chaos around you. So, imagine always this. Embrace uncertainty. Prioritize ruthlessly. Stay agile. Overcommunicate and keep calm. With these five things, it will be much easier, or maybe much less hard, for you to deliver on your promises and manage projects in chaos. Don't try to fight the chaos and bring order to everything because this is just impossible. Think about that and see you next week with another 5 Minutes Podcast.
