The Project Book

CHAPTER 25 TELL STORIES

As a new manager of a project management office back in the early 2000s, I decided that what was required was more consistency, and by that I meant more paperwork. I’d been on a course, grabbed myself some new knowledge and decided to implement the method I’d learned.

I spent the best part of four weeks rewriting a 450-page manual into a format that would be suitable for my organisation to use. It was like rewriting The Lord of the Rings, but with less adventure and no kind of enjoyment for either author or reader. I didn’t talk to my stakeholders, as I was convinced that this was what the organisation needed and that its implementation would be welcomed. I simply had the work approved by my line manager.

Oddly, it wasn’t welcomed at all. It was met with stony silence. No one responded to the emails I sent out. No documents were received on the due dates, and the dramatic organisational progress I’d promised never happened.

I’d forgotten to do all of the things that had made me successful as a project manager: to ensure the sponsor was engaged and understood the organisational need; to build relationships with the users to find out what would work best for them; to produce a plan to implement the new approach in the right way.

Luckily I was given the chance to rectify my mistake, and I discovered, ironically, that taking much of the method out and providing a tool for them to capture their information was much more effective and laid the groundwork for ...