Introduction
"If you love your work, if you enjoy it, you're already a success." - Jack Canfield
I love my job. I really like leading people through challenges and delivering projects against the ticking clock.
That's why I see my job as a playground, rather than a grey space for working 40 hours a week.
When you enjoy what you do, you can't stop thinking about it. This is what happened some weeks ago when we welcomed Inaya, my little daughter, to this world.
Today we'll compare together two amazing experiences: leading a complex project and parenthood.
Ideation
We define and kick off projects usually because there's a business need we need to cover. So, this would be the driver to start working towards the end goal of our project.
Parenting is all about sharing happiness and hope with your life partner. So, in this case, there's no business need, but a life need.
Planning
Planning is present in almost all the important activities of our lives.
A football coach needs to prepare and plan the strategy for the next match. A surgeon needs to prepare all the medical equipment and do medical exams to be ready for the surgery.
The project manager must also be ready and have a mitigation plan for all the risks that may arise. Managing a project requires also doing financial planning and resource allocation.
In parenthood, when you know your baby is coming in nine months, you start thinking about names, planning the logistics, and finding a nursery.
Execution and Monitoring
Executing a project involves communicating with all the key stakeholders. A project with bad communication is always doomed to failure.
While executing a project, the project manager will face challenges and issues. Crucial decisions will have to be taken to keep to wheels of our project moving.
When childbirth day arrives, parents have to be ready to face challenges and will likely have to make crucial decisions.
Monitoring the progress is a constant in both project management and parenting, as we always want to deliver the smoothest way possible.
Completion
Finally, after a long road, which sometimes may feel like an eternity, the project is successfully delivered, and we can meet our baby.
Now it's time to celebrate. The project manager will celebrate with colleagues and stakeholders at work, and the new parents will do with family and friends.
Some admin tasks will be required to be done: the project closure, lessons learned, registering the new baby, creating the ID card... but we'll happily complete those as we reach the end of the road.
Final thoughts
Welcoming a baby to this world is one of the most important projects a human being can do. But the birth of a baby is not the closure, is just the beginning of an even more challenging project: The project of life.
In today's blog, I wanted to raise how enriching can be both experiences, managing a project, and parenthood.
What about you? What are your thoughts on this topic? I would love to read your comments below. If you prefer you can also send me a DM on Twitter.
By the way, if you liked what you read, let's connect.
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