The boss reached across the table and handed me a manila folder. “This,” he said with an edge of gravitas to his tone that was a beyond his normal cadence, “is how a project handoff is supposed to go.” Several months earlier, my first project had been handed to me by necessity due to a flurry of tragedies striking the company at one time. When the dust settled, there was a project that needed managing and the only one available to handle it was me. What followed was a wild ride on the crash course of project management. But while I rode out the turns and loops on that wild ride, the company was slowly righting itself in the wake of multiple health emergencies in key leadership and loss of supporting personnel. Now, very near the end of that first project, I was sitting in the conference room directly opposite my boss, receiving my next project folder.
He was right, this time was very different. The project had a clear set of budgets for me to work from, there was a list of recommended subcontractors, a window list, a door list, a lumber list; everything I didn’t have from the first project, and everything I needed for a good launch and a good schedule. I felt the heavy weariness that had haunted me over the course of that first project sloughing off as I reviewed the contents of this folder. With this tool kit in hand, and the hard-won experience I had earned over the last four wild months, I could do this, and I could do it well.
Still, I procrastinated starting the project. I set up my subs, wrote out their contracts, set up my materials, and set up my schedule, but I could not bring myself to set the actual start date. The project was a small addition on an easily accessible side of a large house in and area I was quite familiar with. The owners were nice, reasonable people, the house was not particularly old, was plumb and square, and everything was ready to go. But when I looked at the large, clean stucco wall that was all but begging me to put a hammer through it, pressure rose in my chest and I could feel the blood hammering in my temples. What would I find under that stucco? What had I forgotten? I felt very confident in my management of the world of known challenges, but what of the ones that remained unknown? I had just navigated several months of constant engagement with my own lack of knowledge and experience. I had fought well, but the process had been humbling and at times, humiliating. Maybe I was better prepared this time, but I was still firmly in touch with my own weaknesses, had no illusions over my still very novice experience level, and knew that it was the unknowns that are the hardest challenges to overcome.
There was a safety here standing and looking at the stucco, but not busting into it. Here on the outside I could make myself busy poring over the plans, budgets, lists, and contracts, forcing myself to find more details that I could convince myself needed more thought and organization before I started. Once I actually swung the hammer through the stucco, I was at the mercy of the project. Whatever I had missed would be revealed in time; exposed by the exacting and relentless hand of the project. Furthermore, when that first blow pierced the diaphragm of the wall, the house was open and made vulnerable to the elements, and there would be no stopping until the addition was built and the wall was sealed back up around it. To strike the first blow was to make real the commitment to see the project to a finished state and devote myself to solving all of the problems that arose within; those seen and unseen. It was safe, comfortable, and easy to procrastinate here on this side of the project, but every form of progress lay on the far more uncertain opposite side of that hammer blow.
It took a few minutes dedicated time for me to actually define the fears and concerns that kept me in the relative safety of preconstruction limbo, but eventually I was able to name the problem accurately as a fear of commitment. Given my limited and recent chaotic experience managing projects, my fears very rationally longed for the level of safety and comfort of that preconstruction limbo. Yet another part of me knew that the security in inactivity was temporary at best, and largely illusory. The only real path was forward. Once those fears and concerns had been named, it was not hard at all for me to adjust my grip on the 8 pound sledge and drive it right through the stucco. We were under way, and it felt good. Of course there are no promises that the project wouldn’t go south five minutes after initiation and certainly no guarantees that I wouldn’t fail and fall headlong, but I was as well prepared as I knew to be, I was surrounded by an excellent supportive cast, and when you think about it, most promises for comfort and security are illusory anyways; to live is to risk.
That project went very well. The owners were some of the sweetest I’ve ever worked for; they brought us coffee every morning and sweets in the afternoons. They gave us nicknames (I was Smiley) and when the project was over, they gave me a collage of photos they had taken of us working on the house as a visual record of the whole achievement. It didn’t go perfectly; we had to set insulation in 114 degree weather, we broke a window in transport, and I made a mistake installing the stain grade window trim, but when the problems came up, we found them and fixed them and the finished product was neat, clean, on budget, and almost on time.
To this day, the image of that unbroken stucco wall remains a symbol of commitment in my head. My process working through that dilemma was pivotal in my maturation, and indeed some five years after the completion of this project, I drew deeply from this when I made the largest commitment of my life. My wife and I celebrate our tenth anniversary this month, and our shared endeavor has proven itself to be the greatest adventure of our lives. It’s a gift, and I’m grateful for any and all of my experiences that brought me to the place where I was willing to step through my fears and freely engage in a new and scary level of commitment.