Plain English management
I have been considering my prospects in editorial work. Humanity will always need people who can make sense of business speak and political nonsense and rewrite it in plain English. But the trouble is I have so much trouble understanding the words, I can barely lay claim to being one of those valuable people any more.
So this week I decided to take another look at the workbook from a project management course I did recently. Project management, like copy-editing, requires clear thinking and attention to detail, and these skills come naturally to someone like me. By the way, I couldn’t afford the swanky expensive PRINCE2 course. For those of you who don’t know:
“PRINCE2 Project Management Methodology is a Process-Based Method for Effective Project Management.”
The PRINCE part is a great little acronym – PRojects IN Controlled Environments – and “2″ because it’s the second version. The course costs about £2,500 and is based on a 486-page book printed in font size 6.
So the course I did was more of an “introduction” to project management, considerably cheaper with a 12-page course book and a printout of the accompanying PowerPoint slides. Of course, I didn’t gain any qualifications, but I found out what a PID is (project initiation documents) and that the most common “planning tool” is a to-do list. That really boosted my confidence because I make a lot of those.
I also discovered that the project management profession is full of fun, can-do types who, like every other professional clique, have a whole plethora/range/PID full of perfectly galling adages, such as:
“Failing to plan is planning to fail”
and:
“Never assume, because that makes an ass of u and me.”
(It actually hurt to type that out.)
The other problem with a career in project management would be that it would take me away from words and nearer to charts and diagrams. Admittedly, I don’t understand the words any more but I have never got on with charts and diagrams. They remind me of those patchy pictures therapists flash at you and ask you to identify.
And then there are the “stakeholders”. You have to get their support for projects at the outset and go through “stages of stakeholder analysis” so that you can “map out” your “power interest grid”. Stakeholders are usually people, which means that every successful project manager – as well as being a fun, can-do type – would probably describe him-, her-, or themself, as a “people person”.
That’s not really me.
Then you have the risk analysis, PESTLE forces, forcefield analysis, change curves and the RACI matrix to deal with.
If you can be bothered to click on the links above, you will see that from the way some of the people in these websites are smiling, one might even think that using so-called “project management tools” could be fun. But I suspect that it isn’t really. I suspect that it’s just an excuse for dressing up a simple to-do list as something more complex and important than it really is by reaaranging it and laying it out in coloured boxes.
Charts, diagrams, grids… I think I’ll stick to editing and plain English.
