From Project Management to Work Management

One of the things I hear most frequently from prospective customers is that they don’t manage projects. What they don’t realise is that everything you do at work is a project.

A large part of my career to date has been spent in marketing so let me contextualise this with an example of a marketing campaign. Most would just call this a campaign, right? Let’s discuss what and more importantly, who, is involved: 

-      Campaign Manager has to create a plan and timelines for launch

-      Finance needs to approve budget

-      Creative has to work on the ads and get feedback from the campaign manager

-      Brand Manager will have input to keep the campaign on message

-      Sales Team has to be briefed on expected number of leads and what the offer was

-      Leadership will require ongoing reporting of the campaign’s success

 That is three different departments and sub-teams within them, who need to work on this.

When I go through this exercise with people, I ask them to tell me how they would achieve it with their current tech stack and it’s often a mish mash of emails, spreadsheets, more emails, a Zoom call, Photoshop and PowerPoint. Nothing is one place and this creates broader issues around visibility and reporting. 

Just think about the financial cost of this approach. Then think about the time wasted updating your work in several places or searching for the most up to date version of a document. Factor in the time spent searching emails chains, going back and forth on instant messaging apps or those endless Zoom meetings and it starts to stack up pretty quickly.

As I look at my diary for the week ahead, a team of us in Wrike are planning a Lunch & Learn session about the Simon Community, a charity that helps the homeless. My colleagues on this tiny but mighty team are made up of sales, marketing and customer success. So far, as part of organising this talk we have had to:

-      Find a speaker who currently works with the charity

-      Work with another colleague to get a date and time slot as he manages the calendar

-      Speak to the charity about ways Wrike employees can get involved

-      Loop in IT to schedule a dry run

-      Create some messaging that will drive attendance to the session

The above are two examples of work that most people would not consider to be “projects” but when we look at the associated to-do list, they are really just tasks and they involve a lot of different stakeholders. 

Everything we do in our day to day lives has tasks associated with it and much of it requires input from other people. It is simple collaboration, but this can be the most difficult thing to achieve.

As companies have moved to working remotely, a fantastic opportunity has been presented to not only reevaluate your work practices but also the tools at your disposal. Think about how much easier your life would be if you rolled them all into one...

If you would like to know how Wrike can do this, drop me a message or start your free trial