Romancing The Clone
Last Saturday, I was invited to address a local group of romance writers to talk about accomplishment.
What's that, you say? What would I have to offer a group like that?
Fair question. After all, Gantt charts do not have heaving bosoms. Status reports do not sweep people up with their rippling biceps. Project sponsors do not sulk and pout (er... um... wait a second... let me get back to you on that one).
But throughout our round-table discussion, we were able to focus on what we had in common as writers. Since all of my books are business fiction with characters and a plot line, we were able to discuss the development of our books. We shared issues on writers block and finding inspiration. We pondered the "joys" of marketing our work.
Project managers often times isolate and silo themselves. Because, by definition, every project is unique, they buy into the fallacy that no other project manager could possibly relate to what they are going through. After all, what could a project manager in life annuities possibly share with a construction PM? Is it even possible for a medical project manager to talk with a marketing project manager?
The reality is that most projects have (or should have) things in common. A favored older post by Glen Alleman articulates this better than just about any blog post before or since:
Certainly the development of a building, highway, and sewage system is not done in the same way the development of a software system - at least at the detail level. But David and Jim [two of Glen's peers] seem to be missing the field observation of the massively parallel activities, customer interaction, continuously changing plans and deliverables focus that takes place in construction projects.
The reality is that every project should possess the certain common elements, which I detailed in my last blog post on this site, when I talked about auditing a project.
My point? After two decades of working in this town, I've noticed that project managers like to (for lack of a better term) in-breed. They network with the same people from their company. If they do network outside their organization, they seek out project managers in their same industry. While it is not universally true, alarmingly many project managers do not seek those "outside their village."
If you are new to a project, I would encourage you to seek out project managers from other companies, industries, and viewpoints. While no one project is a clone of another, there are still plenty of lessons to be learned from those who are NOT like you. You never know what you might learn from a romance author.
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