The creative process needs all manner of the right ingredients to truly happen.
The creative process needs all manner of the right ingredients to truly happen.
Have you got a brief? Fantastic – all journeys have to begin somewhere!
Your wacom-wielding designer is happily caffeinated, pencil and paper in hand?
That bookish wordsmith has surfaced out of the library, ready with a notebook?
The #1 coding ninja is lined up and ready to go?
Great – that’s probably a third of the battle sorted. But as amazing as all of these talents are individually, there needs to be a glue to hold their collective efforts together. And if it’s going to be the show-stopping, jaw-dropping deliverable you know you’re capable of, that better be pretty strong glue.
Say hello to the all-important Project Manager.
A great Project Manager is not just an amazing communicator, but also a gregarious personality with enthusiasm to spare. Not only does this person keep multiple plates spinning away nicely, they also know instinctively when to switch on the “get things done” mode. Experience has taught us a few other handy insights into the inner workings of a Project Manager – so read on…
Be an Amiable Amigo
Granted, you’re most likely the driving force behind making whatever project or deliverable happen on-time and within budget. But if you don’t remember to build consensus amongst your team – or inspire the people around you – you may not be the easiest of facilitators to work with.
Hopefully you think of your colleagues as much as friends as amazing collaborators – and if not, it’s never too late to start!
Lead from all Directions
Navigate, motivate, delegate. And sometimes – while you’re spinning those plates – you’ll need to slow down before you can speed up. Project Managers need to hold all sorts of information in their mind: from fleshing out initial risks in a project’s early stages, to sorting out granular, step-by-step processes of their team’s workflow, whilst everyone else is mid-flow. Be just as ready with necessary technical skills, as you are to step back and provide high-level overview of where your team is, at a given moment. Be ready for all of it, and then some.
Lazer-like Attention-to-Detail
Successful project management is intrinsically about all details of a project – hefty and light, big and small. While each member of your team is sweating the details – on their individual plate – it’s your role to ensure every single one of these details – combined – manage to align. Each and every one has an impact, and every Project Manager knows this well.
At the end of the day, to the Project Managers of the world: you all truly are superheroes.
Without you, it’s unlikely your creative teams would be able to produce anything new. And what should everyone else take away from this blog post?
Be nice to your Project Manager, as they no doubt are to you!
