In light of the success of president-elect Barrack Obama, community organizing deserves another look across the spectrum. It is no secret that Obama’s success resulted from his ability to manage people. But what does people really mean when they say that Obama managed people well? Was Obama really good with people or with management? I would bet the latter, since the whole point of organizing people is to get things done. Obama’s success was not a result of his ability to get a bunch of people together in order to do nothing; rather, he got them together in order to do something.
Now, I may just be biased, but it seems to me that organizing a group of people to do something sounds a lot like project management. Namely, it seems to me like Obama must have planned out different phases for different parts of his campaign which all entailed final goals. For example, perhaps his first phase was fundraising, which was itself a massive endeavor. Within this preliminary phase, Obama must have had hundreds, if not thousands, of sub-phases and tasks; for example, he might have had a sub-phase for fundraising in California, which itself had the tasks of setting up campaign centers and advertising. Eventually, Obama raised enough money and support that he had a sizable base; in turn, he could assign his people to tasks in order to ultimately achieve his goal of victory. It seems, then, that it might be unfair to attribute Obama’s victory solely to his people skills. Instead, it may have been the result of great project management. Here at ProjectKickstart, we believe in giving everyone the tools necessary to run a successful and professional project.
Tags: Barack Obama, checklists, community organizing, election, plannning, Project KickStart, Project Management