Make it Fun

I had the parental pleasure of attending my daughter’s graduation ceremony recently and, as you would expect it was a proud and emotional moment. I am now officially the least qualified member of this particular family unit (but the only one who is published so I am clinging on to that…)

The University was clearly well prepared for this annual activity and it went off without a hitch.

About 250 students graduated with degrees, masters and doctorates in this session and there was a second session that same day followed by four more over the subsequent two days. So organisation was clearly important.

But you know what? The mere fact that it proceeded with such efficiency and timeliness actually detracted from the event for me. Like many parents I wanted to cheer and shout when my daughter went up to receive here degree, but this would have been frowned upon. I was in fact quite jealous of the one mother who shunned protocol and let out a loud ‘whoohoo!’ for her son (who no doubt went red in embarrassment). So a little audience participation would have been nice, a little deviation from plan acceptable, a small element of fun enjoyable.

As I say in my book The Lazy Project Manager (see I told you I was published) you have to laugh; well I think you have to laugh. Without a little bit of fun in every project then the project world can be a dark and depressing place.

Setting a professional but fun structure for your project can really be beneficial for when the problems start to rise up to challenge your plan of perfection. And problems will inevitably arise.

In the years I have done many things to encourage team bonding, lighten the darker moments of project hell, and diffuse difficult project related situations. I have even accepted the full and complete blame for every problem, issue and challenge to a project  in front of a room full of project team members, before walking outside and firing myself (in a loud voice, well voices – one mine and one me pretending to be my boss). The net result was a diffused situation, where it had previously been extremely confrontational between teams and individuals.

Done well this does not damage your status or authority but can actually be a very positive act in people seeing you as a human being, and not just a project manager, and thereafter wanting to share a smile and a laugh with you during the day.

It is just the same in that hotbed of confrontation, the home!

Try looking at one of your children when they are in a really bad mood. Look them in the eye, with a serious face, and point a finger at them and say’ Don’t laugh! Don’t you dare laugh! If you laugh you will go straight to the naughty stair!’ I bet at the very least you will get a smile out of them.

My family finds that, even in the most stressed out, aggressive, emotional and ‘in your face’ moments, if you can make the opposition (and I use that term loosely) laugh then the war is soon over.

It is hard to kill someone when you are laughing.

Well I guess that is true except for some of the more extreme psychopathic types (‘No, I expect you to die Mr Bond’ … cue maniacal laughter).

Tags: Efficiency, Organisation, PMO, Project Management Office, Project Manager, Project Team