I lead through understanding the team first. While rigid structures or rapid change can be great overall for an organization — it can be a stressor for those at the end of the process, no matter how flexible they may be.
That is why I start with people first.
Who is on the team? What are their past experiences? How do they approach their role? Once I know the team, I adapt management strategies to work for them, not against them.
What if the team is expected to adhere to a specific management model?
All I hear these days are the hot words: agile, sprint, pain-points, story points, backlog… and how it works through inflated metrics at the executive level. What the terms do not show is the struggle of adaptation, and employees being forced to adhere to them with a lot of friction along the way. This is why it is important to me to learn how people act within that model, then optimize along the way to make any management model work for the team, not against.
At the end of the day, project management frameworks are tools, not rules.
I started my career as the designer where fixes are done right before launch, and when there's no time for thought because other teams took too long in the beginning of the process. When I transitioned from an individual contributor to a manager, I knew exactly how the pain points the designers endured. I used their unique workflows to my advantage and started advocating pain points for the designers before projects ever got to them. When speaking to clients, I knew how to translate their vague directions into an action plan for the designers. I learned how the clients think and expect, so the designers can get to what they do best faster.
The result?
Higher Efficiency Rates. Higher Project Predictability. Higher Client satisfaction. Greater Cost Savings on Labor Hours. Risk Mitigation on Fast Turnarounds For High Visibility Projects.
Comments