Rethinking my rethinking of project management
I was watching a Bill Hader interview with Variety in prep for season 2 of Barry.
Interviewer “This sort of stink of desperation around the actors in the show… Have you encountered that in people you know?”
Bill Hader “Oh yeah, I encounter that all the time. Especially living in Los Angeles, you feel the desperation of actors… and the amount of actors and people who have come up to me and go, ‘Oh man I so relate to that.’ But it’s not just people who haven’t made it yet. I see it in people who have made it, you know? I’ve seen people who are wildly successful still be very kind of desperate and needy and all that.”
My cousin told me about a project management role she applied for. My initial instinct was that she wasn’t qualified, but I wasn’t either and am barely qualified now (on paper, definitely not). That feeling of being a fraud never really goes away and being an insecure overachiever kind of sucks. So I instead thought to give her questions I’d ask for people interviewing for our office with our project management team, and also thought I’d offer some work I did to get an idea of what I do.
I went back and quickly read the first thing I wrote for Buttondown and I think of how far I’ve come (and how fortunate/lucky I am). From my experiences, I can tell I was on the right path and had the knowledge, but I obviously know so much more now. What I did in the last 3 weeks of righting the ship of a VoIP phone project at UAB that was a year behind schedule and in complete chaos but was a major initiative of our VP so literally everyone wanted to get involved somehow to get credit and be visible but the people actually doing the work want it to end so they could move on with their lives (also I knew nothing about networking and telecoms 3 weeks ago) plus working with a 3rd party vendor plus it's a $5 million contract… I definitely don’t think I was ready for that. (Humblebrag).
And I am not sure what to tell anyone who’s never done project management how to handle that project. Because yeah, I knew what a stakeholder register or RACI was, but documentation is not why a project ever failed. It is necessary to help you get organized so you can feel like you have a grasp on everything, but no project ever died over an agenda or meeting notes not getting sent out. Likewise, a project can survive without a weekly status report being sent out. It is nice to send that to upper management so they can be informed, but if the actual big picture work doesn’t get done, what is the point?
I’ve had a few people in my life take a project management class recently. One asked me for help on a homework assignment and I was happy to help. I got the prompt and immediately told him that if I were given that project in real life I would fucking quit. It was something like, “You are the VP of a hardware company. You are in charge of making sure the first international store opens in 10 months. Present a plan in 3 weeks to get this done.” So for homework that week, he had to do a project plan, a stakeholder register, and a budget.
Are you fucking joking? How is that going to happen? And moreover, why is that an assignment prompt for an MBA project management class? It’s not realistic at all. Also, I would love to see any actual project manager do a plan, register, and budget for an entire international construction project in a week.
Anyways, back to my point.
I still think project management is very misunderstood, especially how it's supposed to be correctly done. I am good at taking meeting notes, I do not consider that to be my job and do not want that to be the focus of my job.
I think of my job in a much more human way. What problem can I help you solve, and how can we solve it as soon as possible while helping you feel the least amount of burden as possible?
I’m going to share questions I shared with my cousin to think about for when she goes to apply for a PM position and if she gets an interview. For each question I’ll add what I’m really trying to get at with each question. Forgive my formatting.
What size projects have you worked on and how many people or entities are involved?
- Are you a good politician?
On those projects, what happened before and after your involvement?
- Did you let people complain and listen to them about whatever bureaucracy you all deal with, and then help them get back on track to focus on the tasks at hand?
Have you ever worked on a project that successfully closed? If not, what happened?
- Looking for honesty here.
What is an example of a time where you had to learn something you knew nothing about and what did you do?
- Listening for a self-motivation explanation.
What is an example of a risk or issue that came up during a project, and how did you handle it?
- This one is a loaded question, but mainly wanting to hear how someone deals with frustrating situations and then how they present those, or how they react to urgent situations (or even what they consider to be urgent).
What is an example of a time where someone on your project team was not doing their work, and how did you handle that?
- How did you say, “Come on man, everyone wants to be on vacation, but let’s get this done quickly so we can be done.”
How did you handle someone on your project team not being communicative while also falling behind on their work?
- Did you bitch about the person first, or did you go talk to them to see if anything was wrong?
What is a project you are most proud of, or what project did you learn the most from? Explain.
- Open-ended, hoping for something in their personal life.
How did you manage your time when you juggled many different projects at once?
- What’s your stress tolerance, and also what are your coping mechanisms? What are you like when you’re overwhelmed?
Walk me through a time when you saw a problem and took initiative to solve it.
- Have you ever been like, this shit is stupid and should be done this way. Don’t care if I get in trouble, this is what’s right.
That’s a lot for now. I’m sure I could go on. But it’s past my bed time. Would be happy to hear what y'all think.