This is something that’s been bugging me for a while: you are no better than any other PM because of your title, process, or culture.
A framework doesn’t equal preparation
I don’t care if your title is project manager, digital project manager, integrated producer, or a half dozen other similar titles. At the core, all of us are being tasked with the same thing—running a project. We have to get over this bullshit where people think that their philosophy, process, methodology or agency culture somehow makes them better prepared than someone else when it comes to managing projects.
I’m tired of it. If you think you are better than someone else because you run Agile or you’re a scrum master or a project manager, not a producer nor a nineteenth level black belted ninja six sigma whatever—you’re not. These are just different frameworks. They have nothing to do with your real abilities.
Move the hell on.
That boat has sailed.
Elvis has left the room.
No framework is perfect when you are managing creativity.
The bigger world outside the windshield
When I was twenty years old, I was on a long drive to a concert with my younger brother. Half-way through the two-hour car ride, he turns to me and says sarcastically, “Dude, is this how you drive?” I looked at him like what the fuck? You’re three years younger than me and just started driving, what, six months ago? I thought I was driving perfectly farking fine.
He said, “Dude, you need to learn to drive defensively.”
His point was rather simple. I was more concerned about what was going on inside the car—the music, my speed, the air-conditioner—than what was around me. He noticed shit that I didn’t. Not only did I blow through two unmarked car speed traps, I didn’t notice when the cop car pulled up behind me. I saw him when he came around me. I also didn’t notice the eighteen-wheelers that had boxed me earlier while driving through a construction zone, nor the 73-year-old grandma in my blind spot casually drifting outside her own lane.
With great humility, my younger brother taught me something that I haven’t forgotten: When we concentrate on our own little bubble, we forget the stuff outside of our immediate view. We lose out on the bigger picture and are blind to what can affect us, come at us, or kill us from any angle.
I’ve worked in big agencies, creative agencies, interactive shops, and production studios. I’ve run the gamut, putting project management and production in place at agencies for years. As technology has changed, so has our thinking about how we manage creative projects. However, I fear we are missing the bigger picture when it comes to figuring out what we really need to do as guides of creativity...
When we concentrate on our own little bubble, we forget the stuff outside of our immediate view. We lose out on the bigger picture and are blind to what can affect us, come at us, or kill us from any angle.
While my brother was half-joking with me that day, I think I took his advice pretty hard. I also learned the bigger point of his message. He was in the car with me, and it was my responsibility to look after him too—not just myself.
Do you want to know what makes you more valuable than someone else when it comes to running projects? It’s two things: your ability to work with people, and your ability to look at things from a systematic perspective. Know when to lead, when to manage, when to coach, and when to step back. See the big picture, not just your own fishbowl. Act with insight. Action and inaction can both create a cascade of intended and unintended consequences.
Here’s what sucks: You won’t learn these skills by taking classes or reading a book. You don’t magically earn these abilities when you get your PMP certification. You won’t pick it up at a two-day Scrum seminar. The only way that you can gain this knowledge is by experience. By applying what you learned to real-life situations, seeing the chaos that transpires, and learning from it. These are not technical skills. They have to be learned and developed.
Projects need you to think on your feet
Creative projects live at the edge of chaos—all the planning or free-range thinking in the world won’t prevent crap from raining down on you. Working under one specific methodology or another is not going to make it easier for you either. The idea that you command and control projects in traditional project management is a myth. Agile with Scrum or kanban as frameworks are also incomplete instruments for managing people, finances, or operations. They break down easily when teams suck, lack trust, or can’t be open with each other.
These skills depend on your personality. Not everyone has the ability to think big. You and I both know some very smart technical project managers whose people skills lack humanity. And we all know PMs that have a hard time thinking their way out of a paper bag.
Systematic thinking and the ability to work with people at different levels are two concepts intertwined. One can’t work without the other. We don’t just manage projects, deadlines, or requirements. We guide people, deal with risk, and manage some crazy-ass clients. It’s fucking complex.
Swallowing chaos is the key
As a project manager, you may think that being in the driver seat means you are going to be safe. That’s an illusion. Stupid feelings of security kick in when we think we’re in control—yet the moment we think that something kicks our asses every time. We strive every day to stay on track, to have equilibrium, and to gain consensus from a bunch of people who often can’t even decide on what shade of blue they should use. Stasis is fleeting because what we do has a complexity that is always going to teeter out of equilibrium no matter how we approach it.
This is why the “manager” word in our title doesn’t even come close to describing what we really do. Sure, we may manage on occasion, but we may as well be stepping in to act as a leader, or to fill in for a missing team member. What we do goes beyond the simplistic notion of management.
This is why the fight over which methodology makes more sense drives me absolutely crazy. As project and team leaders, we need to have the ability and flexibility to work in any framework that makes sense to get us to the right outcome. These myths about methodology have to die.
You command and control: nothing
Traditional project management that maintains command and control is illusory. The same goes for the idea that teams magically self organize and everything turns up rainbows. That’s false. Ask any Agile person who has worked in a real Agile environment, and they’ll tell you how hard it is for some groups to self-organize. Ask any traditional project manager if they were ever fully in control of all the factors or team members on a job, and they’ll tell you the same thing. Interpersonal dynamics become elevated and super heightened in creative environments. It’s impossible to predict how teams will respond.
Project management is not like herding cats either. Nope, it’s nothing as cute as that. No—your real job is to lead a group of hungry starving animals, lions, hyenas, cuddly little rabbits, and baby deer across an infinite super highway filled with traffic. If you don’t learn how to make that journey together, either you or some of your little furry friends aren’t gonna make it out alive. No methodology, book learning, nor singular process is going to teach you how to avoid being PM road kill.
Keep your eyes on the road
Even if we all get out alive this time, there’s no guarantee that we will apply that experiential knowledge the next time we have to crawl out of the wreckage. Next time, it’ll be different projects, different passengers, and different paths. Creative projects are not repeatable, and human behaviour is not necessarily predictable. Your next project is waiting to maul you with new, unexpected challenges. Will you be ready?
We have to think larger than titles and technical skills. We have to watch out for who’s in the car with us and what’s going on outside the metal box we’re driving, not just what’s in front of the windshield.
