Welcome to the Dark Side

When I was promoted to project manager in my mid-twenties,  my colleagues at the software company where I’d worked for a few years as a content developer congratulated me by saying, “Welcome to The Dark Side.” 

I knew exactly what they meant. Project managers at our company had a reputation for being hard-nosed about business. They got things done, and they weren’t afraid to employ a range of Machiavellian tactics to guarantee success.

I didn’t welcome the conversion—I sought the job because I thought I could do things better, with a deeper understanding of the pressures the content developers were under. It didn’t take long, though, before I succumbed to the seductive pull of The Dark Side.

I lacked positional authority. The people on my project teams did not report to me, with the exception of a few short-term contractors. I learned quickly that I could not make anyone do anything. I could, however, make it very uncomfortable for them not to comply with my directions. 

My methods were crude and often brutish. A clipboard with a checklist was a favorite device:  

“Can I have an update?”

“Is it done yet?” 

“When will you be finished?”

”This is past due.”

When this tactic fell short, it was time to bring out the heavier artillery. Public embarrassment at the weekly status meeting. A fiery email to the underperforming person’s manager. 

For a time, it worked. I didn’t make a lot of friends, but I did get things done. One colleague told his peers I was “a bloodhound.” I took this as a compliment.

And then, something shifted. Like many people who undergo a transformational change, I didn’t arrive at the idea on my own. Instead, external circumstances forced me to find a different way.

In my second year as a project manager, I was assigned to work on a very complex new product in development. My role was to project manage content development while the software development work was simultaneously underway. Included in my scope were three content teams consisting of approximately 40 staff members, plus two dozen contracted voice actors. In addition to managing the timeline and dependencies among these teams, I was responsible for liaising between the content development department and the six software development teams who were developing the new product.

Things quickly became overwhelming. I realized that my methods for managing my simpler projects would be woefully inadequate for this new challenge. And while I knew I didn’t have time to checklist everyone to death, I was unsure what I needed to do instead.

At one particularly low point, I got into a shouting match at a weekly status meeting with the manager of the visual team for missing a key deadline. When I asked for an updated date, he refused to answer. “We’ve never done this before,” he protested. “We can’t possibly guarantee when we’ll be done.”

”Unacceptable!” I snapped. 

The rest you can imagine.

Sometime after this exchange, I realized how ridiculous I’d been. My reaction all but ensured this man would not return to another status meeting, or be honest with me about his team’s progress. And while it was aggravating to leave a question mark where a revised date was supposed to go, it was nonetheless the most honest answer to the question.

In the ensuing weeks and months, I had a change of heart. I wish this transformation had purely been the result of introspective reflection. The majority was driven by a more pragmatic reality I needed to contend with. I was pregnant with my first child, and would soon be going out on maternity leave.

As I prepared for my leave, I had to come to grips with the facts of my impending absence. Things would go on without me. My ego wouldn’t have permitted this admission before, but my fast-approaching parenting duties required me to accept this very obvious fact. I would not be able to manage things by simply putting in more time. I had to find another way, one that required much less of my personal involvement.

So I began experimenting with new ways of accomplishing my objectives. Instead of personally tracking progress and endlessly torturing a Gantt chart into submission when things went off-track, I shared the bigger picture with my project team. I showed them how their work connected to each other and how delays in one area would impact other tasks.

And then I stepped back.

Our weekly progress meetings shifted from the harsh interrogations I’d relied on to maintain order to a more dynamic and egalitarian conversation. I knew something amazing had happened when one of the visual team producers shared a delay in the process, and followed this up by explaining how they’d coordinated with two other teams to ensure the overall schedule would stay on track. 

For me, this was a clear sign of success. My true task hadn’t been to “manage” all the work—it was to set up a structure, an environment so that everyone could manage the work themselves.