It’s been a while since I’ve written about project management on this blog. At first I wasn’t writing because I was leaving the museum world and returning to the commercial world and the conversation base had changed. I realize now that it hasn’t changed at all. I haven’t lost my 40+ years of experience, my standards haven’t changed, my judgement and refusal to settle for inferior results haven’t changed and anything I have ever written on the topic has always embraced a new world where museum standards and commercial expediency were mutually beneficial. If you’re new to the field that wasn’t always the case and it was part of the discussion when I started my former position. Yet my commercial experience was the reason I was initially brought into a museum from the commercial world in the first place. Now I was returning to the commercial world in order to disseminate that information and approach on a larger scale. Kind of like what I am doing here and in my book (shameless plug). I also wasn’t writing because we were all sent home and writing about the details of project management seemed irrelevant for several reasons. The first was obviously that there was and still are more important issues to think about. The second is that I believed the business that I deeply care about was about to fundamentally change and I didn’t know how. This happened to me once before and it took months to understand and assimilate. Not just me but the client, the company I worked for, really all the stake holders including the world around us, or at least for NYC had no idea what to expect.
I had begun planning a major museum relocation in NYC prior to 9/11 and started it when NYC returned to work post 9/11. The project had changed for multiple reasons but was fundamentally the same once the changes were accepted and accounted for. Everything still needed to be relocated, there was still a budget, a staff to direct and a start and end date, but the field that was the constant for the variables had now become the primary variable. I’ve discussed accounting for variables on a project previously on this blog, and I go in depth in my book “Project Management for the Arts” (second shameless plug), but normally adjusting for variables means how do you adjust if a truck breaks down or the elevator doesn’t work. A project plan rarely includes what to do if the world falls apart. Of course changing the landscape we work in doesn’t mean leadership, problem solving and industry common sense have changed. Those qualities are needed now more than ever to lead us out of this. My concern, after safety, health and finances, basically surviving, was and still is the impact of new social practices on our lives. Of course personally I’m concerned for my son’s education, for traveling, for returning to the subway, for grocery shopping, if someone I know is ill with a non-Covid-19 issue do I advise them to go to a hospital or ride it out, (that’s happened twice so far), all the same personal and global issues many of us are dealing with. Life has become managing variables that are changing rapidly. It’s like navigating a car through an earthquake around a tornado while driving on flat tires, but we all know the car still has to get where it’s going. That’s not the question, the question is how to get there while adapting and adjusting? How do we navigate the variables when it’s all variables?
Among other things on my mind I’m thinking of back to work strategies and I’m trying to anticipate how managing large projects will change and how social distancing and wearing PPE impact the teamwork and constant contact that managing a complex art service project requires. That’s a small part of a much bigger picture and again like many of you I’m working on a half-dozen initiatives each with 10-20 legs to it. How to manage a project during all this is just another leg in an overwhelming cascade of issues. Then I had a moment where I remembered with any great project you will never make headway by working on everything simultaneously. I know you have to break a project down into its parts and prioritize, solving one leg at a time until the problem the project presents is solved. I know this, I teach this and once I reminded myself I started making headway on the initiatives. What any good project manager knows is that all the other initiatives are swimming around in your peripheral thinking looking at the world for an answer. What a project manager needs to do in this environment is one of those answers I’m looking for.
Then I went out today on my once a week trip for prescriptions, laundry and groceries. Each store had a sign telling it’s clients “no mask, no entry!” and the floors were marked with one-way signs in the aisles and foot prints on the floor 6′ apart with signs telling clients to distance. That was the upper management approach to the problem and I’m seeing and discussing many of the same things. I put on my mask and walked into the drug store and I see that out of the seven customers only four had masks on, three walked in without masks and one was talking to the pharmacist with her mask under her chin. Then I went into the laundry and the woman that manages the drop-offs and pickups had her mask and gloves on but the woman next to her had her mask under her nose, the next two people had their masks under their chins and they were talking face to face less than a foot apart and the woman on the other side of them had her mask off to eat a sandwich while wearing her nitrile gloves. I really don’t need to go into what the grocery store was like, we’ve all seen that. Then I realized the cashiers, the laundry person, the pharmacist were all powerless except for whatever personal power they might have. They were all given protocols but a worker isn’t going to remove a client, or refuse a client service, while management is watching and saying nothing. Maybe the reason is job fear but my thought at the time was, “The staff at all locations was all looking to management for more than direction, they were looking for followup implementation and leadership and they were being abandoned.”
All if this is leading to what our responsibilities are as project managers when we return to work. I think our first and primary objective needs to be to not send our teams out with protocols then abandon them when they begin to interact with the public. By abandon I mean we shouldn’t leave it up to them to police their environment. Yes, they’ll have guidelines but It’s our responsibility as point of contact to initially tell the clients what we expect from them when they interact with our teams and then we need to remind them of the seriousness of our protocols prior to our teams going out, most of us have this part down. On site it will be our team leaders, our lead drivers, our project managers that need to step in and quality control the environment. If a client interacts with our staff without a mask it is the senior on-site managers responsibility to ask the client to comply. If the client refuses or is dangerously lax, the project manager, needs to pull the staff from the site with the knowledge that they have our support.
There are companies that wont do this. Lets all be the company that does and if we witness a company that’s willing to sacrifice health or lives for commerce or comfort pass the word. If you work with a company that allows close and unprotected contact you need to keep in mind that they also are concerned with your commerce over your health, your safety and your life as well as the lives of your loved ones. None of us are in this alone and until things change our industry will need solid leadership and communication to survive.
That was the first leg of what a project manager should expect to do on a project. When we return to this fragile and changing environment, your responsibility is to be a leader of your team, to be the person that steps in front of them to protect them from abuse, to show that you are not only watching the timeline and the budget but that you also have your team’s back and you’ll watch out for your team and stick up for them when its required. That’s what a leader does.
The second thing I learned today is that it is hard to breath through a mask when its over 70 degrees out and you’re active. I was gasping for breath within 30 minutes and needed to find isolated areas to breath and drink water. Also any phone with facial recognition doesn’t work with a mask so passwords will need to be used. Thinking the events of a project through from beginning to end and preparing for the problems is what a good project manager does, it’s what a good manager does. They don’t leave the problems and incidentals to be figured out in the field or on the fly. They prepare and schedule and plan in-depth and with foresight based on experience and compassion and then they lead based on what works and what is right and what is best not just for their client or for their company but what is best for both as well as what is best for their team.
That’s what a project manager that is a leader does because it is what any good leader should be doing, being out front, anticipating issues and protecting all stake holders including your team.
Chuck Agro
(final shameless plug)
Chuck Agro - Project Management For The Arts 