How To Join Amazing Project Teams
There is a portion of work at any organization that is pointless busywork. We've all been stuck on some of these. The idea starts off as something useful, but once the idea goes through a few meetings or committees, it gets whittled down to some atrocity of a project that bears little resemblance to the original awesome idea. Those who are sentenced to work on the project have their soul slowly siphoned from their body. We would like to have as few of these experiences as possible.
The best way to avoid getting roped into projects that don't matter is injecting ourselves into projects that do matter. This is easier said than done. First of all, it's not always apparent that a project is going to be a colossal waste of time from the onset. But even after we have tuned up our lame project radar to avoid the ducks, we need increase our influence skills to shimmy our way onto the awesome projects.
The biggest indicator of the potential success or failure of a project is the leader of the project. Some leaders have figured out how to marshal the resources and relationships to get pretty anything done within their organization. They are seemingly a never ending win parade. These people are easy to identify.
Once you have identified this titan of commerce, you have to prove yourself worthy of inclusion on the gravy train. Leaders that produce consistent wins are great at identifying top performers to collaborate with. Volunteer some of your time to assist with a project they have going on. Often this will mean more time at work for us, as we will be adding this project to our current work queue. If we deliver quality results in a timely fashion, we will earn invitations to do more work for awesome leaders.
At this point, it's usually time for some negotiation with our boss. Most bosses allow for a bit of extracurricular exploration into projects outside their portfolio, but we don't want just a little bit of that awesome project experience, we want the awesome project buffet. You can handle this negotiation yourself, or.....
Have the awesome leader negotiate a shared custody arrangement. This is easier to do in situations where leaders in our organization are aligned with the shared interests of the overall enterprise. Remember, the awesome leader understands how to get the resources they need for success. Once we have proven ourself as one of those resources in limited time, the awesome leader is more likely to advocate for us spending more time on their valuable projects.
Avoid the busywork, identify the superhero leader, prove ourself to be valuable, then join the Avengers. We owe it to ourselves, we're only doing this career thing once.
