What If | You are the Project Manager
We are getting into weird times, and we are getting into times where everyone is blaming one of each other for things that we are not responsible for. For the same reason, we will need to help others to understand what it takes to be part of the problem and being part of the solution to see if we can find more people that can help to solve this issue.
The Pandemic
According to Bill Gates, we missed the opportunity to get ahead of any pandemic or any serious virus that can kill thousands of people. However, the government and other people around the world are trying to come up with multiple solutions that can help them to solve the big puzzle.
The only problem with this is that people will need to find better ways to be productive and be more creative since the pandemic has been made everyone to re-think about working-from-home. Now, as a company, you will need to think about all the problems that will appear because of this situation.
These problems are related to losing your job, losing productivity, and losing interest in the current job that you have and the problem that you might have at home like not having the most adequate place to work or the best place to have your motivation at 100%.
So many problems are coming, but we need to remind ourselves that we need to still work to be able to survive or to have the money and food to help your family. By saying this, I’m not saying that we need to be 100% attached to the rules from your current company. However, you need to find a balance to be able to finish your work and to spend time with your family.
Now, we hear other problems like companies are lading people off through phone calls, and through video call which is not ethical.
Then, we know all the problems that we are currently having, but what about if you are the Project Manager of all of thee projects from the company. What if, you are in charge of keeping all people productive, and you are in charge of saying what people need to do and what no to do.
It is time to start thinking as the project manager:
How do I get everyone on track?, How do I keep everyone interested in the project?, How can we make other people work in tasks that are not related to their field of experience? & How to keep everyone happy?
To answer these questions, I will start by saying that we need to think about having some complications and having some problems to make and collect some money. In other words, if you know that our company is losing money due to COVID-19, we will need to act pretty smart and see your teammates and start seeing what they can do good. Let me be more clear, you will have people that are working as a software engineer, but he or she is good at selling and to reaching out to people. My best approach to this is to talk to every single person in the company and see if they can jump into different projects that can help the company to be more stable to make sure no-one will lose their job.
To a lot of people, this will sound weird but if you think about it, I will rather keep my people instead of giving more problems to the people that work for us. As a project manager, I will look for things that everyone else can do, and to see if it is something else that we can do to try to prevent other difficult situations.
Also, to keep everything interesting, I will bring all the people on board to define the issues or situations, questions and concerns, and possible solutions that can work for every single concern that we internally have. By bringing all people to all of these problems, we will start seeing chaos because no one knows what to do. However, we can start doing A/B testing with every single process to start looking for the ideal answer.
At this point, imagine that software engineers are working with computers, Industrial Engineers are working with processes, and Project Managers are working with people. Now, Imagine how cool will be having everyone into the table with the same problems and the same questions.
By having multiple questions we will have a lot of answers and we will have to produce many possible solutions where everyone will be willing to help and willing to produce more.
If you work in a startup, you will understand what I’m talking about, and you will understand that you will not be part of only one project or only one team.
This is the time where we will need to change the strategy to be more productive and to be able to change and innovate to make sure we will take care of one of each other.
To change we will need to be able to adapt to any other circumstances and we need to start forgetting entitlements. A lot of people will say that they worked hard to get into the place that they are right now, and we will need to understand that our skills will still be valuable but we need to understand that we need to help.
In my opinion, I will say that we will need to be open and flexible to give a change to our paths or careers to be able to help others and to be able to accomplish everyone’s goals. Is nothing wrong with changing and helping.
Now that we are in this hard and complicate times, we will need to even say thank you to those people that are being worked with people to make everything better. Every single person is valuable, and everyone deserves the same respect. If you know someone that is having a hard time or someone that lost their job, I will recommend you start reaching out to them and see how you can help.
Now, if you have questions about this, and you still not sure how to start, feel free to reach out to me, and I will do as much as I can to help you.
Click on this link to listen to my podcast: https://anchor.fm/thelast
