Conducting Your Symphony
When you’re in charge of a project there are many different components and team members to manage. It can be overwhelming for even the most organized person because there is the tendency to view the myriad of elements as individual self-contained projects without taking into account that they all need to work in concert with one another. You need to realize that you are the conductor of a productivity symphony.
A symphony is an elaborate production (just like your project)
A symphony is a harmonious combination of elements including vocal and instrumental arrangements performed by a group of individuals coming together at an agreed upon time and place to share the spotlight with every other member of the group and to demonstrate their talent in public and under the direction of a single leader — the conductor (that’s you, bub).
The conductor understands that their symphony is made of up individuals, but they also understand that there needs to be a single cohesive flow of those individual performers in order to produce the desired result and make their audience (i.e. customer) happy with the outcome.
The conductor knows when to bring a specific instrument into the spotlight and when that same instrument betters serves the overall goal by playing more softly i the background while another performer takes center stage.
A symphony isn’t performed by individual musicians taking their turn one-performer-at-a-time playing their sheet music and then letting the next musician play their own part, and so on down the line. The power of a symphony comes from the fact all these disparate musicians, instruments, and notes come together in just the right combination in order to bring beautiful harmony from such potential cacophony.
Conduct Your Symphony
When you’re managing your individual team mates and their tasks on a large project, don’t forget to take notice of how those individual elements are actually all connected to each other in the final presentation.
Remember that sometimes one individual or task needs to take the spotlight while the other lend support from the background to provide the harmony — but don’t forget that time in the spotlight is temporary. Attending a symphony would be very boring if all you heard was the clarinet.
Your are the leader and charged with bringing all these disparate elements and individuals together in a successful crescendo of completion.
Conduct yourself accordingly.
