The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - My Adaptation of Kipling's "If" for Project Managers

Episode Date: February 8, 2020

An adaptation of Rudyard Kipling's "If" with focus on the challenges faced by Project Managers and inspiration from Kipling's great work.

Hey everybody, Kevin Pinnell, host of People Process Progress Podcast. Thanks so much for coming back. I wanted to share a reading of a poem that I adapted from Rudyard Kipling's If. If you haven't read that poem, please do. It's a fantastic piece of writing about pushing through, not taking into account other people's lies about you, and pushing through and really becoming a man, doing hard things. And again, you can Google if and you'll find it everywhere.

As I listened to that, I reread it recently. I was reminded of the struggles and the challenges that project managers face. And so I took that poem and adapted it for project managers. So I'm going to read that for you here. Would love to hear your feedback at peopleprocessprogress at gmail.com or on the Facebook page of the same name. And here we go. If you can remain calm when risks become issues and your sponsor is looking to you to resolve them, if you can believe in yourself when others blame you but have contingencies in place to address that blame,

if you can stay dynamic when the timeline slips, or escalate when needed but don't burn bridges, or deflect frustration but not get frustrated yourself, do take some credit, but share the wins across the team. If you can strategize but not make one strategy your master, if you can manage tasks but not only be task-driven, if you can prepare for project failure or cancellation, and accept both of these, hardships and move on. If you can abide by the report you've just given, warped into a different message than what was said, or accept many weeks' worth of planning be scuttled, and take ownership and leadership to replan again. If you can put all your resources towards a big bang go live and stick your reputation on one implementation at a time and fail

but learn and continue to try and do not complain to your team but rather lift them up. If you can push through the early mornings and late nights long after the coffee has no effect and stay dedicated to your people when you are emotionally exhausted, accept the drive that says to them, we can. If you can present to boardrooms full of people or walk with the C-suite but also the boots on the ground, if neither vendors nor co-workers can hurt you, if you can earn respect and help your team but not become a crutch,

if you can optimize your meetings when together as a team, if you can streamline resources to complete your work, yours is leadership and all that comes with it. And which is more, you'll be a project manager, my friend. Thank you, everybody. That's my take on Rudyard Kipling's IF, Adapted for Project Managers. Might do one in the future for a planning section chief. I think it's, again, the original is a masterpiece.

So thank you so much for listening for a few minutes to my adaptation. Hope you all have a great weekend and Godspeed.