Adam Morgan’s book The Pirate Inside
So why did I read it? A project team is like a brand team:
- we normally have one vocal champion who believes in the project
- we want to succeed as we know our project will have a positive impact on the company
- we understand why we are doing it and bring other people along with us
- we are single-minded and focused on the one thing (at least, at a time)
- we measure outcomes.
In fact, doesn’t that sound like any team? The differences between a project and a brand are not that pronounced, and there’s a lot of relevant stuff in Morgan’s book that speaks to running an outfit that does a good job, despite the odds. And that’s the stuff of project managers: we make the impossible happen on a daily basis by shrinking schedules, mitigating risks, co-ordinating chaos, balancing budgets.
The title of this book comes from a quote by Steve Jobs: “It’s more fun to be a Pirate than to join the Navy.” Morgan takes this statement and uses it to illustrate what makes brands successful. For example, the belief that bending the corporate rules – or breaking them outright – is sometimes necessary to do what is right for the brand, and by extension, the company. However, a Pirate is never an anarchist, they just work to a different set of rules.
The first part of the book considers behaviours that stimulate challenger brand cultures: outlooking, pushing, projecting and wrapping. Believe me, by the time you get to the end of the 300-odd pages you’ll be speaking a whole different language. Essentially, this bit talks about how brands that make a mark in their sector come about and the kinds of things that are required in order for them to do so.
Part two looks at the personal qualities required to be a successful brand manager: things like building commitment, developing a contract between team members and my personal favourite: Taking it Personally. Morgan calls this ‘a different kind of professionalism’ and it’s something all project managers would do well to bear in mind. If the project budget was your money would you treat it in the same way?
Parts three and four discuss practical ways to adopt a challenger attitude without getting fired. There’s a fine line between doing things differently and being so out there that you break with the basic tenets of your organisation and find yourself out on your ear. Still, if there’s no clear reason why you are churning out weekly timesheet reports, don’t do them.
Project managers fall into the category of team member Morgan calls Implementation Rhinos. Not the sexiest of names, but we are the people who get things done:
“…people whose primary talent is delivery, rather than standing on podiums in front of Venn diagrams expressing a new model of Brand Architecture. The Implementation Rhino is absolutely critical, and is the great (and often) unsung hero of any organization.” (p208)
Hear, hear.
There are plenty of examples in the book of teams that have worked together and been successful, and a whole lot more examples in the newly-revised edition of Eating the Big Fish
The clearest parallel I drew from this book is that it is fundamental to have a project sponsor who will support you and champion the work of the team. Someone who can fight your corner in board meetings, and when you say you want to throw out the plan and rebaseline the whole thing from scratch, they believe that you are doing it for the right reasons. Morgan calls these people Smokejumpers, from a firefighting term meaning someone who flies low over forests in North America and, if they see anything burning, go in alone to limit the impact by cutting a firebreak. Bet you wish your project sponsor could stop early signs of smoke turning into a fire. If they can’t, maybe you have the wrong sponsor.
In Morgan’s book, people are judged by results. There is always a leap of faith, supported by senior management, before the brand begins to deliver what it said it would. While he does also touch on brands that failed, he doesn’t cover how to build a reputation that would give people a reason to support you. Most of the brand managers interviewed have either set out from scratch (like the innocent chaps) or already created a name for themselves as a good judge of the market. As with project management, you need to either have an remarkable champion, or have built a credible reputation before someone will put their neck out to support you.
There’s a risk with project management that we become very entwined in our own discipline. Our discipline is getting things done through other people, so reading books like The Pirate Inside helps understand how other people think. I understand a lot more about the concepts of branding, what makes a successful product and how these things come into being. That will make it a lot easier for me to understand my internal customers, and also push for success in my project, which is like a mini-brand within a larger organisation.
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