Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Urgency and energy are great qualities to have in the people on your project. Urgency can be instilled in people via careful and thoughtful motivation. Energy may come in the door with some people. Given either of these, work moves quickly. Without them, work doesn’t move.

I have become my father.

That statement is usually given with a sigh of woe. I recall Billy Crystal saying it once in a movie as he bemoaned this and that about the inevitable atrophy of his physique. I, however, make the statement with pride and a big smile.

Four months ago, I became a grandfather with the arrival of a grandson. I am a great grandfather. I love to keep my grandson while his mother goes shopping or something like that. She knows it and she allows me and my wife to keep the baby a few hours at a time. I play with the boy, take photos, and make videos.

In a very short amount of time, I learned how to:

1. shoot video sequences on my digital camera
2. edit the individual sequences on my computer
3. paste the edited sequences into one video
4. export the videos to YouTube
5. embed the YouTube videos into my various web pages
6. watch the videos on my iPhone

These embedded videos allow my  mother and my wife’s parents to see how their great-grandson is growing by the week. They enjoy that.

So what does this have to do with anything related to this blog?

I emphasize that I learned these various things quickly – in just a couple of hours. I was motivated, i.e. I had lots of energy for this task. Learning was fun. I also had a sense of urgency. I wanted to put the videos online as fast as possible so my distant relatives could see the baby.

I contrast this level of energy and urgency with some of the projects I worked while employed by the government. Progress in those was glacial (can glaciers move backwards?). When something new arrived, no one wanted to learn it; no one wanted to do it.

Are you a project manager? I urge you to either:

instill a sense of urgency in your staff

or

find people who have energy (desire) for the task.

Without these, you might as well be waiting in line at the Post Office.