The Great Poetry of?Projects

Managing a team through?art

Little poems

Let me tell you about one method of luring people into a project in the long run.

One manager, a great lover of poetry, came up with the following thing: every Monday he sent his project team a poem. He would choose something unusual, a little-known author, interesting. And, of course, not too long, serious and boring.

At first the team was indifferent to the initiative. Someone said that the man had gone mad. But after a few weeks, people were already happily waiting for the next batch of literature in their mailboxes. Even those who thought they hated poetry rejoiced.

The chosens

Remember in one of DeMarco’s books, there was a project in which the testing team began to wear black T-shirts to emphasize their uniqueness? About the same thing happened with the poems — they became the team’s thing. They were discussed at lunch, quotes from them were recalled at meetings. With that intonation and smile that “only our team understands this”.

And after the project was over, people asked not to exclude them from the poetry mailing list. And the cunning manager said:?

“I’ll think about it?… It’s not for everyone, you know?… But I have a project that starts soon, and you did a good job in the past, maybe go to me again?”

The fake

Other managers have tried to replicate this successful experience, but have not succeeded. Neither music videos, nor reproductions of paintings, nor funny photos from the Internet aroused the employees’ interest.

Apparently, poems have their own magic…