At work, I’ve recently been… “promoted” isn’t quite the right word, but… assigned some different tasks from what I had been doing previously. This has, for the most part, been a nice change because the day-to-day labour can sometimes be pretty damn boring. Some of the new tasks I’ve been working on are starting to look a little nearer to project management. The funny thing is, I first picked this book up from the library back in the summer, and this not-promotion happened later in the fall. Prescient!
I’m only a few years out of school, so frankly I wouldn’t expect anybody to trust me with a full project. But last week I was the team lead for a group that rolled out a major new process that affected our whole company (which is more than 500 people). And I think it went pretty well! There were a few hiccups, as there always will be with any new process, but I think it turned out as well as it did for our group because I busted my ass to get us as prepared as possible.
In the months and weeks leading up to the go-live date — this started pre-not-promotion, by the way, so I wasn’t even the leader of our team at this point! We were hierarchy-less — we found we weren’t really getting the support we needed, and we felt our input wasn’t very highly valued. We were making suggestions and asking for templates and posing questions and pointing out issues and and and… About a week or so before launch, our group got together and I sent an email on everyone’s behalf to the project manager with our list of needs/questions/issues. In our heads, this was sort of our final offer — take it or leave it.
And… a lot of it got left, which we expected it would. But we knew that those were things we needed, so we went ahead and did them/found them/built them anyway. In the end, I built the templates for our team. I set up the email structure such that it made sense for our workflow. I renamed and reorganized shared electronic folders in a way that was logical and useful for us. Without these things, we would’ve been toast at launch.
This is not to say that the rest of our little team didn’t also have great ideas: one member came up with a great system for dealing with all our pending items — an issue we didn’t realize we’d have until we actually launched; another suggested we set our phones on mute and that we all start at 8 a.m. on launch day to sort through any last minute kinks together — normally we work staggered hours. Another person brought Valentine’s lollipops, because sugar is vitally important.
And I think that’s the thing about being a good leader. It’s not just about bossing people around, and taking credit or blame when things go right or wrong. It’s about making yourself heard, but it’s also about listening. It’s about getting people what they need. It’s about being supportive and standing up for each other. It’s about figuring out how and why people do their best work, and to help them to achieve that. It’s about figuring out how and why people don’t do their best work, and to help them tear down whatever obstacles are in their way. It’s about seeing problems when they’re still on the horizon, and doing what you can to prevent them. It’s about making people feel appreciated. If you do it right, you’ll truly appreciate each other.
(And the lollipops. Holy fuck, did we appreciate those lollipops.)
Put the Book Down 