Yes…you are dead on! Running the project, fighting the fires and progressing toward the goals of your organization and your customer’s organization can be energizing and even fun. But dealing with some of the other ‘drama’ that gets in the way of doing your job well is what sucks the fun right out of it..and sometimes the productivity, too. Thanks for reading and commenting.

Brad

The Lazy Project Manager http://www.thelazyprojectmanager.com

“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”
Douglas Adams (Author of ‘The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’)

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 perfectness. 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 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).

I like your posts and for me the most important priorities for making PM “fun” is definately working with skilled resources, on innovative projects and having a chance for some “hands on” myself as a resource person.

I know that most books do not recommend project managers working as resources, but in small and medium sized companies this is often required.
And being a technical person, it keeps you on the pulse of technology.