DNA: A classic case study of Effective Project Management
Note: This article was published in International
Journal of Trade & Global Business Perspectives © Pezzottaite Journals. Volume
2, Number 2, April-June’ 2013
A year back, when I was
associated with C-DAC (a premier research and development organization in Pune)
I had a chance of writing, direct and acting in a play called DNA-D
Nightmare Awards (That’s the long form of DNA with reference to this article).
Now when I look back at the conditions in which the play was performed at
C-DAC’s 24th Foundation Day, I feel that DNA can be termed as a
classic case of effective project management. In addition, I am sure everybody
who was associated with it will agree with me.
In management parlance,
successful project management means achieving the goal by planning, organizing,
motivating, and controlling resources. In addition, DNA was over and above
that, as we had not only managed to pull the show with great performances but
were also nominated to repeat the act at C-DAC Mohali’s Annual day in
Chandigarh. However, it was not a cakewalk,
as we had to do the show within a timeframe of 15 days with only one-two hour
of daily practice and that too after our work hours.
It started with my inclusion
in the Cultural committee of C-DAC, where I was given the charge of coming up
with a comedy skit/play/drama making use of the in-house talent in the C-DAC
Pune centre. We conducted auditions for all the stuff to be performed on a
cultural evening like dance, singing, Fashion show and acting. However, very
few employees of C-DAC were interested in acting alone. Most of them were
interested in either singing or dancing. In addition, the ones who showed
interest in acting or were good at that were multi-talented and wanted to be a
part of every item. Again, it was the 80:20 principle of management where only 20% of people do 80% of work and the rest of the 80% contribute to the remaining 20% work.
Somehow, I could finalize 15
employees/members including me for my skit, which was an improvisation of my
ten years old drama performed during my engineering days. It was a spoof of the
popular Filmfare awards ceremony and it commented sarcastically on the way
these awards are given. Since Hindi Movies / Bollywood is something everyone
easily relates to, our cultural committee approved my concept. In addition,
we decided to go ahead with this idea of giving away the Nightmare awards to
the worst performers of the year in all categories, singing, acting, direction
etc. My only worry was will this concept work presently, although it had worked
for ten years. The confidence came from my experience in management, which
says that taking risks and ownership is important for a project manager/leader. However,
the next worry was to convince the other fourteen members to believe in my
idea. This required people skills along with project management. I had to
literally motivate every member to see the big picture (Read: Grand finale of
DNA) to get started. It also included assigning the right character to every
member or work allocation as per the interest and expertise of each member, in
management parlance. We had all types of members in our skit, right from the
new joiners like Kanishka and Sherin to the veteran actors and senior members
like Asmita (HRD officer) and Ranjit (Principal
Technical Officer). Keeping the motivation level of all these members high
without hurting anyone’s ego was a real tough task for me, which I could, fortunately, do to reach the rehearsal stage.
Finally, we started with a few
rehearsals, but we were not getting all the participants to do the rehearsal at
one time. In addition, this went on for the next five days until I felt that if we
could do the skit successfully. Bringing all the fourteen different
personalities on the same wavelength by matching their frequencies took another
five days for me. In addition, the day when everybody came on a single platform,
leaving his or her egos aside; we had a litmus test to pass. The scrutiny
committee comprising of the wives of the Executive Director and Director General
suddenly arrived and declared that they will be short-listing the
performances. This step had to be taken
to limit the items to a few good performances. In addition, everyone from our
skit-DNA became nervous to perform in front of the committee, without any prior
rehearsal. I had to don the hat of a director as well as an actor since
Ritesh, who was supposed to play Jithunda(Mithun Chakraborty) had gone to Delhi
for a presentation. This reminded me of the same situation during my
engineering days where we had to find another Mithun on run time for the same
skit. Somehow, we performed the skit in front of the committee with fumbling
lines and nervous faces. It was a dud and a real setback to us as none of us
could perform up to the expectations of the scrutiny committee.
Now our skit was nowhere in
the Final list of Cultural programmes that were to be performed on the Cultural
eve of Foundation day, which meant that the members who rehearsed only for the
skit for the last ten days were going to get demoralized and my credibility was
going to get tarnished. In such situations,
the leadership of a Project manager gets tested. In this scenario, a Project
Manager can do two things; he can blame someone for the situation or he can
take responsibility for the failure and try to convert it into success.
Thanks to our team, due to which I could convert the failure of our skit into
success. We requested the scrutiny committee to give us another 3 days and then
scrutinize our skit. The committee had nothing to lose in it, as they could
make a space for ten minutes for our skit, if it comes out well and if not then the status quo prevails. So I urged every
member of our skit to have a positive approach and make the task possible.
Another thing was that we had
a threat from other C-DAC centres that was going to perform a skit on a serious
issue of drug addiction. On the other hand, our skit did not have any social
message but only entertainment. It meant that Rajinikanth was competing with
Kamal Haasan (Both are my favourite actors)
and yes, like most of the time, this time also Rajinikanth’s movie
gathered more applause from the audience and the scrutiny committee than Kamal
Haasan(Kamal Haasan’s fans kindly forgive me). This was the result of our positive approach and proper practice that we could impress the scrutiny
committee in the quarter-final round with our Bollywood actors’ lookalikes and
their funny one-liners. However, the Chairman of our cultural committee told me
that the other skit would also be included in the cultural programme, as it was on
a social topic and hence we have to reduce our skit to six minutes from the
present length of 15 minutes.
Now, this was something next
to impossible, as we had been rehearsing our skit with all our dialogues and
punches that cannot be crunched to even 10 minutes let alone 6 minutes. But we
agreed to my committee Chairman and promised him that we will crunch it to six
minutes. Everybody else in the cultural committee asked me to complain about
it, but I knew what the situation of our Chairman was. Moreover, I did not want
to land him in soup, because it was him due to whom we got a chance to display
our talent. They say that belief in your manager/superior is the most important
trait of project management. In addition, as they say, every day comes with a
new light; the next day was our pre-final, which was going to be seen by all
the Executive Directors of various centres of C-DAC along with our Director-General and the scrutiny committee. The
project DNA was now at a final stage where it was going to either be accepted
or rejected. In addition, as expected by our whole team, it got accepted for a full 14 minutes without any editing. Everybody congratulated my whole team and
me for coming up with such a hilarious skit. This gave us confidence that
nothing can stop us from rocking the show on the Cultural eve of our Foundation
Day. Everyone in the audience was so much impressed with our idea that many
people asked me if they can be a part of our skit. In addition, yes, I could
offer a role of a physically challenged person to Tathagat on the day of Grand
Finale, which was the icing on the cake and we rocked once again on Foundation day eve. This project-DNA gave me the experience of critical project
management and a new designation of Director, which otherwise would have been a long-term goal for me. I will always be thankful to DNA for that and for teaching me the
nuances of project management.
The video can be watched on
Youtube with the tags, Director’s Cut, Nightmare, Awards, and C-DAC Atul.
LEARNING
- Motivation (including self-motivation) is the most important factor for success in Project Management.
- You need conviction in your idea to make it work through tough times.
- Every crisis is an opportunity to enhance your management skills
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