The Art of Project Management by Scott Berkun (2005)

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.)

Not That Kind of Girl: A young woman tells you what she’s “learned” by Lena Dunham (2014)

Lena Dunham was only born in 1986. If you’re not so good at math, that means she’s still in her twenties. She’s already written a memoir. Holy hell.

Good thing she’s written it now, though — she’s done so much already that waiting too long would’ve made this book too big to fit in my backpack. Essay titles include: “Platonic Bed-Sharing: A Great Idea (for People Who Hate Themselves)”, “Who Moved My Uterus”, “Emails I Would Send If I Were One Ounce Crazier/Angrier/Braver”, and “Girl Crush: That Time I Was Almost a Lesbian, Then Vomited”.

She’s funny, she’s real, she’s awkward, she’s brilliant. I realize this sounds creepy, but I’d like to be her friend. I realize this sounds even creepier, but I recently got a haircut that was semi-inspired by her current look. (In reality, it’s probably a little closer to Kaley Cuoco’s starting-to-grow-out pixie, with sleek, wavy, or tousled options.)

Not That Kind of Girl has lately been lumped in with Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist, which I realize I’m also guilty of doing by virtue of having linked to it, but both totally stand on their own. If they hadn’t been published so close to one another, I’m not sure I or anyone else would make that comparison. They’re very different books, except for having been written by ladies, so, duhhhh of course they’re exactly alike. /sarcasm

Still, it was interesting to read them both within such a short time. It kinda feels like (maybe I’m stretching here) it could be a new era of feminist literature and pop culture. I am probably overly optimistic in this regard, but a girl can dream, no?

This book has gotten a lot of media attention, and for good reason, I think. It’s very good. I already want to re-read it. Lena’s got nice quotes on the back of the book from David Sedaris and Judy Blume, for crying out loud!

I think this is a must-read for anyone who identifies as female, anyone in their twenties or thirties, anyone who pays even the slightest attention to pop culture and Lena’s TV show. Or, frankly, even if you’ve never seen her show, don’t care about pop culture, and aren’t in the correct demographic — as her dad also writes in review on the back cover,

“This book should be required reading for anyone who thinks they understand the experience of being a young woman in our culture. I thought I knew the author rather well, and I found many (not altogether welcome) surprises.”