The Romper Room of Hell
Sunday, I observed a great metaphor for projects: my eight-year-old's birthday party.
We were at one of those kid-oriented places at the intersection of Demolition Derby and Wild Kingdom. You know... the type of place that other species use as justification for eating their young. Complete and utter chaos reigned.
It reminded me of some of the projects I've observed (primarily at the larger employers). The project team and executives behave like a crowd of eight-year-olds on a Mountain Dew, ice-cream-and-birthday-cake sugar high. They scurry from deliverable to deliverable, from issue to issue, from crisis to crisis... with no real agenda or direction.
I liked Jordan's Daily blog recently. He's been working on one of those "client from hell" projects and shared some of his insights:
My manager says I can adapt to this lack of project management system they have in place. She even claims she has books which discuss it.
That really surprised me, because most MBAs would tell you project management is the only acceptable way to run an effective and efficient business. Without project management, you have – well – you have what I experience every day.
Chaos. Confusion. Frustration. Exceptionally high levels of stress – and a never ending pile of work which just gets dumped in your lap, despite already being overloaded with more work than one person should be reasonably expected to complete.
So, one of the big questions I have been exploring is this – is it possible to adapt to a chaotic, unmanaged system of running a business, or is just those that choose to work under such a system have other reasons to give up the methods used in most successful businesses?
If one must work under conditions generally found at the average Chuck E. Cheese franchise, is it possible to bring order out of chaos? The answer is yes; however, the decision-makers must see the pain associated with the chaos and want to make the change.
In Jordan's case, the lip service probably won't cut it, so his concerns are warranted. But if you and your management want to right the course and get the project back on track, try stopping the project altogether to regroup.
That's always a good start to allow people some breathing room to assess what the project is really about.
As I found out yesterday, it is much easier to corral eight-year-olds when nobody is moving. I can count them and line them up and get them back into the hands of their adoring parents much faster when they are not tearing around through inflatable obstacle courses.
Is your project in utter chaos? Make stopping your great accomplishment. You may reach the finish line faster.
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