So while I was working on the book this weekend, I was taking a trip down memory lane to my first year of teaching. I learned many lessons that year, but one that popped into my head recently was the pizza party lesson. Here's how it went down:
It was my first year teaching and my class had donated the most money to charity so my homeroom got a pizza party. The way the party worked was that at the end of the day, several pizzas and sodas would arrive and the students would come and have their pizza and the concept was that the entire class- all 27 of them- would get pizza.
This was not how it went down.
I got 10 pizzas and a bunch of bottles of soda and put them down on the table in front of the room. What happened next can only be described as a pizza massacre.
Six kids from the class came in and started grabbing multiple pieces. One kid cut the box in half and walked out with half of it and one kid grabbed a whole box and left. One kid wasn't even in my homeroom and piled six slices together and bolted. Next thing I knew, there was no pizza and soda left as about 15 kids made their way into the room. They were all good kids and it was rough that I had no pizza for them.
After the shock of the situation wore off, I went into the faculty room and told my story to the Science teacher who organized the party. She asked what I did and I told her I put the pizzas down and then they were gone. She laughed a bit and said, "oh Mike, you can't do it that way. These guys will take everything. You have to hand them the slices yourself and tell them they only get one slice, otherwise they'll take them all"
She was right. The next party, I made sure to give each kid one slice and only take one and sure enough there was plenty for everyone.
Producing is the same thing. You'll undoubtedly have people on your team who will want to take everything on, but as the producer it's your job to make sure these people only take on what they can handle. The same goes for yourself as a producer. Sure it would be great to have the whole "pizza", but then what about your partners?
In the time management seminar this weekend, we talked a lot about that. We all have great ideas and great projects, but certain things push us further and excite us more. We should make sure we ration out the slices since often there's someone who's not getting any pizza.
And that's no fun for anybody.
And sticking with our Pizza idea, there are limited "slices" left for the next Solving for X on Saturday! Get them before they're gone.
Now I'm craving pizza....
Excelsior!
I did wonder where you were going with this! But it's a good point. I've been so guilty of taking too much on in the past, I'm now much choosier about what I take on and how much I want to do. I still work hard, but it feels much more manageable than it used to. Sometimes it's more enjoyable to take just one slice of the pizza... leaves you wanting more.
Posted by: Tom Atkins | February 08, 2011 at 07:00 PM