PM = Waitstaff = PM

The best training I ever got wasn’t planned

Picture it.

It’s a crazy day at work. Back to back meetings. One group discusses requirements while you struggle to understand what they want while managing their expectations.

In another meeting what was brought to the table isn’t quite right and had to go back for yet another round of changes. You aren’t looking forward to discussing this with your already frazzled team, who has been hustling for this presentation.

And, in yet another meeting someone in the back of the house made a mistake (an honest mistake, but still a mistake) and you had to take the heat about it from the customer and your manager.

Just your average day as a member of a restaurant wait staff, right? Or is it a day in the life of a Project Manager working on software projects?

Read it again.

PM = Waitstaff = PM

I worked as a waiter for about four years before I was a Project Manager. After a few years a simple truth dawned on me that being a waiter had a lot in common with being a PM*.

*Note: For this article ‘PM’ means Project Manager. That said, these skills and points totally apply to my current role as Product Manager at Tanooki Labs.

This identification was further solidified when I took an informal poll of PMs and Developers and found that many of my colleagues had also been waitstaff. (To really bring the analogy home, I was NOT shocked when I found out that many developers had been line cooks!) What was it that I was seeing? Consider the following:

Front/back of house: Both software development and restaurants have “Front of house” (the people who work directly with the customers) and “Back of house” teams (people who make the thing or operations). A super-loose role map could be:

• Host = Account Manager
• Waitstaff = PM
• Kitchen/Chefs = Engineers
• Bartender = Designers

Multi-disciplinary teams: Both workplaces have specialists whose skills combine to make a full offering. Without a good PM it doesn’t matter how talented the Account Manager is, much like a great host isn’t going to make sure your steak is really medium rare.

Service and Product focused: Both PMs and waitstaff are focused on giving customers great customer service while also providing them with a ‘product’ that meets (or hopefully exceeds) expectations.

Small teams, big bonds: Both workplaces present opportunities to work with teammates in often high-pressure situations. These environments can lead to great team-bonds and build trust in each other to execute their roles at the highest levels.

Overall, many of the same skills that are essential to managing the lunch rush are damn near required to be a successful PM.

Don’t quit your day job

I know you aren’t going to drop your current PM job to start waiting tables. Here are a few things I learned as a waiter that have been indispensable as a PM for software projects.

Slow things down: You WILL have too many projects. This is normal. Don’t get caught up in it to the point of making yourself frantic. Slow down, prioritize, make a plan then get back to it.

Ask for help: You’re not in a Marvel Comics movie. You don’t need to go into HERO MODE and try to do it all. You are part of a team, ask them to help you. It’s natural to feel like that’s weakness. It’s not.

Talk to people, not at them: Personality sells a PM just as much as it sells a server. I’ve met plenty of both who ‘do the job’ but don’t ‘bring you in’. This takes both of skill and practice.

Manage expectations on both sides: As a waiter you need to manage the expectations of diners, both in WHAT they get and WHEN they will get it. It’s obvious that the same goes for the client stakeholders. This is also true when speaking with your engineers. They need to know deadlines and how things should be executed on just like the client does. Engineers in agile software teams aren’t often “back of the house” (they aren’t at Tanooki Labs) but are present in many meetings. That said, maintaining a high level of communication is crucial.

Understand what your team does: A critical point. An understanding of not just how the whole machine works, but the specialty skills your team members bring to the table is so important. Take time to learn the nuances of their skills and the role. This builds bonds, and also may net you some super useful skills to keep. Like the right way hold a knife and dice an onion.

Once you have a team with great rapport, you want to help them and they you. You can accomplish amazing things and people will surprise you with their ingenuity and creativity — regardless of which back of house you’re dealing with.

Serving at Scale

Hopefully I’ve shown that there is a correlation between waitstaff and PM. Further, I’d wager it is true regardless of the size of your organization. You might be at McDonald’s or Le Bernardin, a startup ready to take on the world or Google. Either way I bet you’ll see that the skills transfer if you sit back and think about it.

Being a waiter was an amazing time in my life, and helped build a huge respect for folks in the restaurant industry. I’m sure many people can point back to past jobs that helped contribute toward who they are. I still find it crazy that I was unintentionally getting trained for a future career, in a totally different industry.