Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

There are many pleasures that come with managing a project. One is learning that you didn’t ruin the people who worked with you.

Author and consultant Jerry Weinberg once wrote:

One of the pleasures of having your children grow up is seeing that you didn’t ruin them after all.

My corollary of this for managing a project is:

One of the pleasures of managing a project is seeing that you didn’t ruin the other people on the project.

They still want to work on projects.

Some of them even want to work on projects with you.

I once worked in an office that prided itself on what it called “target teams.” Never mind the context; to be on a target team was some sort of honor (at least that is what upper managers wanted people to think). I met many people in that office who had worked on a target team and swore they would never be on one again.

The manager of that target team project flunked the above corollary.

I have had the pleasure of meeting people who worked with me on projects five, ten, and twenty years earlier. They told me they would love to work together again.

That phrase – love to work together again – is priceless.