How do you tackle assignments that seem overwhelming?

Moving’s a bitch.*

I know better than most, having abandoned Philadelphia for Washington DC to attend college, then making the pilgrimage to North Carolina for graduate school, returning to Washington for my first job, migrating to Boston to become an agency person, only to be transported to San Francisco to lead a shop, soon departing for New York to run another shop, before finally settling down, ten years ago, to where Roberta and I now call home.?

The last move, to Napa, had its own set of?challenges, but hey, just about everybody I know has a nightmare story about a move gone awry; it’s a complicated, complex undertaking, fraught with hidden landmines, which is why I found this quote in a?New York Times?story?both reassuring and affirming:

“Fortunately, success with a megaproject doesn’t depend on a genius to lead it .…?If you plan well … execution will be swift.”

The article’s author, Peter Coy, isn’t talking about the perils of packing and leaving; he is describing the creation of the now-legendary?747 Boeing?aircraft, “regarded as a huge risk that had the potential to bring down Boeing itself.”??According to the person who led the team charged with building it, Joseph Sutter,?“’If ever a program seemed set up for failure, it was mine.’”?Failure seemed certain, but instead Coy points out,

“the 747 became a huge success.?Boeing made 1,574 of the jumbo jets …. The plane served presidents as Air Force One and carried the space shuttle on its back.”?

Few projects match the complexity of conceiving then creating the?747;?none come to mind in our business.?Even so, I thought about firms accustomed to conquering large-scale, complicated projects and came up with just one:?my friends at Buffalo-based?Hadley Exhibits.?

Hadley?doesn’t make advertising; it makes installations. President?Ted Johnson?would be the first to tell you he’s not in the business of building; he’s in the business of ideas, except instead of being translated into 30-second commercials, websites, or social media,?Hadley’s?ideas are translated into exhibit design, fabrication, and installation.?

I suspect there’s a reason, actually two reasons, why they are able to succeed with complex, challenging tasks like the ones they create and execute:?1) good preparation; and, 2) the ability to break down large, seemingly overwhelming tasks into their component parts.?

And so it was with our move:?we didn’t see it as a large monolithic endeavor, but rather as a series of discrete, definable tasks we first deconstructed then executed, one after another.?

It’s how I wrote?The Art of Client Service.?At the outset I didn’t think of the outcome in its entirety, which struck me as almost too mammoth to comprehend.?I balked at writing a single chapter; still too intimidating.?

Instead, I gave myself a modest, achievable goal:?500 words a day.?In short order those 500 words became 3,500 words a week and 14,000 words a month, ultimately emerging as a 50,000-plus-word, nearly 300-page book.

Somehow the?747?got built.?We moved.?My book got written.?Hadley’s?installations get completed and shipped.?

Whatever you’re building – a marketing strategy, a media plan, a competitive analysis, or an advertising campaign – if you think about the assignment in its entirely, you might well give up before you start.?But if you plan well, then break down and execute the project’s component parts, I’m confident it will get done, done well, and, most important of all, to your client’s satisfaction.?

*Postscript:??In case you’re offended by the not-so-latent sexism and misogyny of this post’s opening line, it too gives me pause.?I’m a believer in interrogating language, so I subjected it to alternatives, starting with the obvious: “Moving is a bastard.”?No one says this, and it frankly doesn’t work.

I tried a bunch of gender-neutral options: “Moving is hard;” “Moving is a challenge;” “Moving is difficult;” “Moving is tough.”?All are pretty anemic, with none working nearly as well as what’s on the page, so I left it as written, knowing that it best describes the travails of relocating.?If the line troubles you, you have my apologies.