Titan

In which our Hero finds himself the star of an imaginary sword-and-sorcery movie; he’s going to look good and get lots of screen time because they’re paying him to be there

The first part of a new project is always the strangest, because we always start with a definite plan to build an undefinite thing. It has to be a definite plan, because you need to get people assigned and paid for, and you need to learn how things work and that all takes time and effort. But the whole first part is this dual reality where you know the plan is wrong, you don’t know just how to fix it, and you have to juggle the two ideas to get to the middle, where you’re allowed to say, “Oh yes, well, we didn’t understand before, but now we do, and it’s actually going to be this big, not that big.”

And between the beginning and the middle, under the cloud of uncertainty, the team is running around, cramming every bit of knowledge they can into the mouth of their brains and trying to digest enough to get a sense of the truth of the shape of thing. There are lots of metaphors that all essentially focus on, “just deal with the next thing and repeat until done.” Which is not entirely helpful except for telling you not to panic.

For me, it’s a fight. It’s a fight to push my team to the objective, it’s a fight to get my own head around things fast enough to make my team effective, it’s a fight to keep the management understanding that we’re still in the “wild guess” part of the program, and with this project, it’s not just me working in the van and preparing the way for my people, it’s a large number of us engaging a large number of counterparts and everybody working in parallel.

But, pardon my ego, I’m still better at this than the vast majority of them. And so as we fight being overwhelmed by the work we have to get through, I’m dropping into situations and imposing order on them. And while I’m in that spot, that area is being made better, but I’m not doing these other things and those salients are collapsing, till I run to that spot and assert order on the field.

Part of the problem is that I’ve stopped pretending to care about the fake timeline. This is causing conflicts because my priorities are not aligned with the project offices priorities. It makes me look bad to them and maybe they’ll replace me. More likely, however, is that with the number of people acting baffled at how they’re running the project and me sounding confident both about what I’m doing and that the current plan is cmpletely wrong, I’m going to make them look bad.

In any case, I’m struggling with this sense of limited omniscience. I can only digest so much at once, I can only command so much at once. And I know my view of what’s important, and I have two different management chains trying to command me to look at what *they* think is important. I can’t get them to define priorities. “Oh yes, that’s important too” is the best I get.

I feel strangely powerful and strangely powerless all at once. Frustrated by my leaders, awestruck at my opportunity to reach. If I were a more sociable person, perhaps I’d have a network to draw around me. Instead what I have is the back-channel of people who I genuinely respect at the client, with whom I share wordlessly, from across the room. Winces, subtle head shakes and quiet laughs under our breath.

I like the sense of self-discovery. I like wrestling with the challenge. I don’t like the feeling of being the smartest person in the room. It’s great for a little while, but then you realize that every single interaction is dragging you down.

Instead I’ll throw myself into the battles I see coming, as I see fit. I will shape this project the best I can to my own agenda.

Or, you know, I’ll just ride it out till my contract runs out of days and put my feet up for the short remainder of this year.