Manager's Musings: #12

The Needle and the Novelist (Part 2)

We all love stories. We devote a substantial part of our life to stories, whether it is by watching movies, listening to songs, following celebrities’ lives, reading novels, telling jokes, treasuring our own anecdotes... It is all about a good story, and how it triggers emotions and feelings in us - marketing people know this very well. Our life is full of stories, and one could argue that our life IS the stories we experience and are exposed to.

When we deal with a new project, we have a group of people and a plan to get to some desired objectives. In a way, it is like having a set of characters and a plot - a broad script. Everyone is expected to do something specific that would lead to A or B, and milestones will define how the project progresses. This sounds remarkably similar to how a novelist tackles a new job, fully knowing that the whole thing will have a life of its own soon enough. And, indeed, when you remember a project that was completed, you can see in retrospect the plot twisting and turning, people entering the stage and leaving, personalities changing, unexpected things happening. So yes, we have a sense of direction at first, but starting a project is like starting a book – you have the ideas, but it is all pretty much about a blank page, and how it all evolves will depend on many factors.

Many things in project management are dull, especially if you see it essentially as a controlling activity. Let’s admit that project managers are not widely regarded as the life of the party. They are most of the time seen as a necessary but boring element of a project – we come in handy at times, but we are not expected to bring in a lot of creativity or innovation. And, to be honest, many project managers have that idea engraved in their own minds, and enthusiastically contribute to this less-than-ideal reputation.

However, that doesn’t have to be the case. In the same way that we can be the needle that magically unearths music from a piece of vinyl (see Part 1 of this post), so we can see ourselves as novelists – with a substantial contribution over how the story will evolve.

And yes, surely many of you must have seen projects that wouldn’t feel out of place in the thriller category, sci-fi genre or as part of Tolstoy’s production. Perhaps more often, I have seen comedies developing before my eyes, and some projects that seemed to insist on becoming a sequel to Waiting for Godot. Sometimes not much happens on the surface but there’s a whole lot going on below, in the vein of Raymond Carver’s short stories. Other times a sort of magical reality takes over. There are complicated political conspiracies, villains, heroes and anti-heroes. There’s the inevitable muffin that would make Proust proud, and the MacGuffin that triggers a whole drama in a way that only Hitchcock could master. There are sagas and side stories, sub-plots and insignificant (but key) characters, there’s Shakespearean kings and picaresque champions, the odd Harry Bosch and scary ghosts of Christmas past, protagonists of Faustian tendencies and lovable misfits that seem to emerge from one of Elmore Leonard’s oeuvres. I’ve seen Boo Radleys and I’ve seen Winston Smiths. Robin Hoods, not so many.

You never know what is about to unfold when you open a project’s first page, but one thing I’ve observed along the years is that most characters are remarkably round – after all, this is real life we’re talking about. Actually, one could argue that there are no flat characters whatsoever – just those of whom you’ve only seen one side.

Now I would ask you to take a step back from your daily routine and look at one of your current projects from this perspective – are you able to detect the protagonists? Who is the villain? Who the hero? Who are leaders and followers? What is driving the story? Are there too many seemingly flat characters? Are you able to know them better? More than anything, what is YOUR role? Are you the silent observer or are you in the middle of the action? How can you affect the plot? Remember, it may just take one email, a small move, to turn things around…

When I was a kid, there was an impactful but brief rise of the “Choose your own adventure” books (I think they have recently made a reappearance?). They were meant to be interactive, so after a few pages, you were prompted to make a decision and jump to a specific page depending on what your choice was. Your choices then led you to one of several possible endings. More than linear novels, perhaps that is the best analogy to capture the uncertainty of projects, with the caveat that with a project you don’t have the luxury of trying again (although I am sure many project managers can imagine alternate endings for some of their completed projects). In many ways, it’s all about wisdom and luck in your decision-making.

In any case, I’ve frequently thought that some of the projects I’ve managed would make for very entertaining novels – with a few even qualifying as soap operas. I never actually attempted to write those stories (too many people may be rightfully offended, and I might even be breaching some confidentiality clause somewhere), but isn’t it exciting to see yourself, at least partly, as the novelist?

Life’s a thrill when you know how to read it, and even more so when you know how to write it.