Don’t eat the mice

Say hello to Buster.

I discovered Buster when I was first putting together the project management team at Wizards of the Coast. I’d been facilitating for years (I’ve led meetings from 2 people to 250 people) — and I was very glad I had those skills. We had to move fast, both to build the team and (because project management was a new function) to create processes and interfaces around the company. I wasn’t expecting the volume of negotiating I had to do with other executives, my own team, and other teams that we would be working with.

All the facilitation skills in the world don’t stop other people from being defensive, uncommunicative, frightened or angered by change, or from hijacking the conversation onto another track. They just give me more tools with which to respond, and more responsibility to use them. But it wasn’t always a warm and happy experience. Sometimes I felt overwhelmed and stressed by the difficulty that even smart, willing people can have communicating with each other; and sometimes my stress came from people who were so caught up in their own drama that they wouldn’t look for common ground for love or money.

And so I would return to my desk, look at Buster, nod in silent acknowledgment of our common impulse, and then go back and start trying to hammer out more agreements.

Buster reminds me that good managers don’t eat the mice. And even if you’re not a direct manager in a corporate job right now, the fact is we all “manage” relationships with each other every day, in large and small ways. So please don’t eat the mice.