It was my first day in my first ‘proper’ job at Vodafone Group HQ, in their swanky Paddington office. I felt overwhelmed at the size of the company, the complexity of the work that was going on and the almost never ending MS Project Plan I’d been scrolling through.

However, that same day, I was given the two most invaluable pieces of advice I’ve received in my career thus far. One was about communication, the other…about Elephants.

Elephants

Feeling overwhelmed by the enormity of the task ahead, I almost froze not knowing where to begin.

Can you blame me? Half the stuff on the Project Plan may as well have been written in French, while the rest seemed like an avalanche heading straight for me.

Jeroen recognised the look of trepidation on my face and asked:

“How do you eat an Elephant?”

I was so stressed, I actually started thinking how I would go about doing it and it hit me – It’s impossible.

As I started muttering some ridiculous answer, Jeroen stopped me and simply said:

“One bite at a time”

Of course, he went on to elaborate this metaphor and it was like a eureka moment for me. It all made so much sense.

How do you eat an Elephant? One bite at a time.

I quickly realised, why try and tackle something so large and complex head on? When it’s easier to just break it down into manageable chunks and take it from there.

To this day, I’ve been using that same technique and it works for all scenarios and all types of projects.

Don’t worry about the size of the steps you’re taking; the key thing is you are taking steps, making progress and are one step closer to getting the job done.

Example

As we speak, I’ve been tasked with putting together a brief for a very high profile project at Pearson. I’ve never managed a project of this type, at this scale, in my career so far. To say it’s a challenge is an understatement!

Now at this stage, I don’t have all the facts about this upcoming project – Something I will need to get a handle on to write a good brief.

To start I focused on what I do know:

• I know I have to write a brief
• I have probably 50% of the information I need from prior experience or conversations
• I know the key stakeholders
• I have a fixed deadline and a rough idea of the Technical/PM tasks that’ll need to be done

Now what I can do now is start the brief with the information I do have, work with the stakeholders to confirm the grey areas, start plotting a high-level plan and iterate from there.

As you can see, I’ve taken something complex with many unknown variables, broken it down into manageable chunks and focused on the things I can control. 

Over time, not only will I be completing key tasks but will also be making important progress – That’s the key thing!

Brainstorm

An excellent way of getting started with unfamiliar projects or projects where you don’t quite have all the information is by brainstorming and creating a simple Mind Map.

Mind Maps are an excellent way to create Sitemaps, Information Architectures, remember things and of course, develop and brainstorm ideas.

Again, they key thing is to make progress – However little or large that is. So by brainstorming, you have something tangible to work with. Often, this will help you create a high-level view and be something you can use as a kick-off discussion with other people.

As you know, I’m currently writing a book called Project Management for Students, I’ve never written a book in my life and I hit a brick wall when I got started.

So, I created a Mind Map:

This helped me so much. It will help you also. If there is only one thing you take away from this post, it should be to start using Mind Maps.