How Being Helpful Might Be Killing Your Projects

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Doing it yourself is how you kill your project

Big statement, I know. But hear me out…

As a project manager, you’re like an orchestra conductor. You’re orchestrating team members, tasks, and resources.

You’re managing work and leading people.

I̶f̶ when a small issue pops up, it’s tempting to step in and fix it yourself. It feels efficient, it’s quick, and you feel like you’re contributing.

But have you ever seen a conductor climb on stage with a violin?

I doubt it.

Because if a conductor did that, it would be a matter of time until hell would break loose.

And the same goes for your project. Not just today, but also in the future. Let’s unpack them.

1. You’re robbing someone of a learning opportunity

The reason to step in yourself is usually because someone dropped a ball. That’s fine. We’re all human.

But why did that happen? Did you give them everything they needed to succeed in the task?

• Expectations

• Instructions

• Resources

• Feedback

• Skills

• Tools

If so, you’re dodging the right thing to do: give feedback and help someone improve. If not, you know you have work to do yourself.

I know this sounds great in theory, and that in the real world, you sometimes don’t have time for it.

But if you do it yourself this time, that means you’re doing it next time too.

You’ve removed the leverage by going from managing & leading to doing. Which brings us to point 2.

2. You’re now the bottleneck

By doing it yourself, you’ve now turned yourself into the bottleneck. And not just today, but also in the future. Why?

Because you’ve solved a symptom, and not the cause.

It’s like a doctor who doesn’t listen, gives you a painkiller, and calls in the next patient. Useless.

3. You lose the overview

As project manager, you’re working on the project, not in it.

The smaller the company and/or team, the more of a theoretical thing this is. But when you’re contributing to the content yourself too, be mindful of when you’re switching hats.

As soon as you have the PM hat on, zoom out. You’re looking for the bigger picture, not for doing an individual task the best & fastest way.

Because even if everyone on your team is doing things right, someone has to make sure they’re doing the right things. And that someone is you.

That’s why a conductor getting on stage with a violin is a problem, not a solution. No one sees the orchestra in its entirety anymore.

No one is there to adjust the timing and dynamics.

And before you know it, everyone is working 60-hour weeks building stuff no one asked for.

Here’s what you do instead

When you feel the urge to fix something yourself, pause. Ask yourself why you’re choosing to do it yourself and see if there’s a way you can help someone else do it instead.

By zooming out like that and finding the root cause of why it went wrong, you’ll often see that it’s a small mistake further upstream in your project. Maybe you set a wrong expectation somewhere, or a handover between two different people is not clearly defined.

Fixing that problem instead of picking up the ball and giving it to the next person as if nothing ever happens is the harder choice for now, but you know it’s the right one.

By not fixing it yourself, you:

• Give someone a learning opportunity

• Don’t turn yourself into the bottleneck

• Ensure you won’t have to solve it again

And that’s how projects get better over time, not worse.

Next week, we’re digging into a great reader question about the balance between real progress and perceived progress. Because often, stakeholders look for the wheelspin & smoke while you know this means there’s no traction.

Cheers,
Jasper