There’s Magic in Them Projects

  Innovation   ProjectsAtWork  

As project managers, we use the language of spreadsheets, performance metrics and percent complete. These painstaking details are essential to the job, but they can also function as noise, hounding our teams in lockstep to ordinary results instead of truly outstanding achievements.

When I was a child, there was wonder to be had pretty much everywhere. There was Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, unicorns and fire-breathing dragons. My parents were rich storytellers and when my sister and I would ask how things came to be, they had a talent for infusing us with a genuine sense of possibility.

As we grew older, we broke the boundaries of parental control. We did more things on our own. We watched more TV, read more books, interacted with friends, and reached out into the world to inform us. As we exposed ourselves to more and more noise, it started to drown out the magic and possibilities we learned as children. Somewhere along the line, noise obscured the magic completely.

Thus we entered the workforce.

At the time we didn’t notice, but that core shift towards the practical and away from the magical hurt our ability to think.

As project managers, we are taught early to use the language of spreadsheets and performance metrics. We report on percent complete. The management of these details allows us get to the end of the job, and these things are essential.…

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