How Project Managers Can Apply the 1% Better Daily Habit to Lead High-Performing Tech Teams

If you’re a project manager, you already know that you dance alongside you’re high-level timeline. Mitigating risks and making sure you’re in the green is part of your day to days, but in a fast-paced tech environment, deviations occur and part of the process of managing timely delivery is alleviating inconsistencies. A clever project manager knows the art of delivering on aggressive deadlines involves intricate planning. Priorities shift and last minute requests from stakeholders are thrown around like frisbees on a hot summer day.

In these cases when technology hiccups arise, they aren’t simply resolved with a quick refresh or a glass of water. The project manager’s job is to keep the momentum going and must have the consistency attribute to successfully move forward.

By committing to steady, incremental improvement, even just 1% better each day, PMs build resilience and adaptability needed to navigate setbacks with progress!

Optimize your Leadership: Enter 1% Better Everyday.

You may have heard of this thought process and may even be thinking, what kind of progress will you really achieve with a measly 1% improvement. However this is actually a very powerful strategy for project and program managers for effective technology team leadership. The key attribute here lies in consistency. It’s not about doing everything at once, it’s about daily micro-improvements that compound into a set of consistent results over time.

How to Apply the 1% Better Everyday as a Tech PM

Bringing this framework into your day-to-day project workflow may be a game changer.

1. Optimize One Workflow Element Daily

You know your tech stack and how important it is for them to be updated and continuously evolve. Small improvements in how work is managed can dramatically boost team enthusiasm. Included are a few examples, however everyone’s setup is different depending on what type of project you’re working on.

• Clean up your Jira or Asana board

• Re-tag issues for better tracking

• Clarify ticket descriptions for development team

2. Encourage your team to provide continuous Feedback

You don’t have to wait for lessons learned or quarterly reviews to encourage feedback from your team. Make it a habit to welcome a conversation that includes lightweight, daily feedback loops. It’s all about progress, and building teams that deliver.

• Ask questions like: What setbacks did you have today? Anything slow you down?

• Prompt: What’s one thing we can do better tomorrow?

• Celebrate improvements, not just outcomes.

This cultivates ideation and active willingness to improve. This also builds prospective on resource management and continuous improvement strategies shaping team moral.

3. Encourage One Innovation Per Week

Innovation doesn’t have to mean groundbreaking, it just means there’s opportunity for a stakeholder to share their ideas. Encourage stakeholders such as developers or designers to feel open to proposing upgrades to tools or products, or suggesting new ones. Since workers come from a variety of backgrounds and experiences, an open communication that encourages progress could bring just that.

A few ideas include:

• Automating part of the deployment process

• Simplifying the process of onboarding

4. Improve Communication by 1% Each Day

If a PM consistently improves their communication strategies with their team, guess what will end up happening? The stakeholders will in turn also get accustomed to consistent clarity. Consistent clarity equals fewer blockers, misunderstandings and result in better outcomes.

Cutting down on redundant meetings could be an output of daily improved communication. Because giving stakeholders their precious time back would benefit a clever PM.

5. Document Daily

Daily documentation is a powerful habit that cultivates consistency, one of the most important traits of a successful project manager. By committing to just 1% improvement each day through simple acts like summarizing a decision or adding notes to a sprint retrospective, PMs build a foundation of transparency and trust. Without documentation and consistency a project managers leadership strength may dwindle. Documentation isn’t just a small practice, this is the aesthetic of delivering on actionable goals.

Delivering Daily on the 1% Improvement Strategy

The beauty of the 1% improvement mindset in tech program management is that it continues to build steady momentum between project manager and teammates. Workstream owners appreciate an avenue where their ideas matter; giving them opportunities to flex their skills and really deliver like a champion.

It provides opportunities to unleash innovation and build high performance culture where every stakeholder feels that they have a voice in “next steps.” Contribution and team enthusiasm  matters.  Small daily improvements in a project manager’s workflow influences the type of success that a PM will lead with.

It’s not about doing more. It’s about doing better and better each time, just a little bit, every day. Even 1% better matters, because it all adds up and consistency is key!

/