I have been doing church clowning since I was eight-years-old and I do not mean funny wig, red nose, and rosy cheeks. My mother was professionally trained as a clown and taught me, so every inch of me was covered with make-up, wig, and fabric.
Whenever I start a new church, I believe in getting involved so I know the people. Well, when I started, the first big event was Vacation Bible School (VBS) advertisement in a local parade. While it was being decided on what needed to be done, I mentioned my clowning ability and they asked me to be a clown for the parade. I enjoyed every minute of it, entertaining, joking, running around, and making a great memory.
A meeting for VBS came up and I attended to see what I could do. Well after discussing assigning, I spoke up that I had not been assigned anything. The pastor said that I had a calling for clowning (which could be taken different ways) and asked me to be a clown everyday of the week of VBS.
So, the planning begins.
I verified with my stakeholders (the pastor) if he wanted anything certain he required, trying to get some limitations as described by the text "Project Management: Planning, scheduling, and controlling projects." He simply said, "Do what you want?" Well, I went to my subject matter expert (my mother). We started going over options and I made a decision, that I believe was my first mistake, but got caught up in the excitement. I decided to do a different clown each day.
Mistake number two arose when my job asked me to work full-time that week instead of just part-time. I agreed, but thought I would still have no problems with VBS since it was in the evening.
So, I carefully planned out an outfit, wig and make-up for each day. Used my computer to see what the make-up would look like instead of applying it on my face. Made sure all the costumes fit and made sure wigs or hats covered my ears. i had each day in its own bag with a tag of what was needed from a different day and what gag props I would use that day.
One of the key enjoyments for me as a clown, and I think others enjoy, is getting to change my voice for the character I play. A very critical mistake I made was not trying a different voices before VBS started whether it was the week before or that day.
Two weeks after the parade, a symptom that I had been dealing with worsened and I ended up in the Emergency Room. I did not let it stop me, I continued with my routine and worked with the symptom every time it came. Unfortunately, fear did hinder me and I did not perform as well as I had in past times, even from the parade. In the multimedia "Practitioner Voices: Overcoming 'Scope Creep'," Dr. Reckom mentioned that one should build in resources ahead of time to help with unplanned circumstances. However, there are circumstances that cannot be planned or prepared for ahead of time.
At the end of the week, I had been thanked and complimented, but I finished not feeling I had given everything I had or could do. Time will tell if I made enough of an impression to be asked to clown again, but after this experience, I will try to remember the age old saying "too much of a good thing." For if I would have tried to do less, I would have felt I had done more for the children, which is what VBS is about.
References
Portny, S. E., Mantel, S. J., Meredith, J. R., Shafer, S. M., Sutton, M. M., & Kramer, B. E. (2008). Project management: Planning, scheduling, and controlling projects. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Bless your heart MaryLei. You seemed to have everything well planned. I would have loved to be in attendance to witness the different clowns you portrayed. Your instance of scope creep had to definitely be creepy. To overcome the creep in the future, I would suggest somehow thinking of a way to go through "metamorphisis" to bring back the clown character you are most comfortable portraying or a new clown that would fit the situation, even it includes escaping the scene. You could even get your SME involved. You could give her some type of sign that says "Mom, come and run me away so that I may go and change characters". Of course then, you would have to have your clown suits on site. The most important thing to remember is things happen, and as project manager it is your job to address the situation and make the necessary changes. In the end, you accomplished the agreement between you and the customer (the pastor) by being "the clown" of the day. He gave you freewill to "Do what you want", so changing characters would not have been a problem. I'm sure the kids enjoyed it though.
ReplyDeleteMaryLei,
ReplyDeleteI love the project you described. First, reading your project just made me smile. Your commitment to being a clown, and a great clown at that, is very inspiring. I have a friend who is a clown, and when I watch him perform I am in admiration of his gift and how he can make others smile seemingly so effortlessly. Second, your description of the project was wonderful. The planning, scheduling, talking with the stakeholder and a SME, clearly showed some of the steps of project management, demonstrating that any project could benefit from project management techniques. I am not sure it was your purpose at the time to manage this as a project using project management techniques, however your illustration of the steps you took points to: there are some automatic often obvious, steps to be taken in any project. For you talking to your mom, planning your costumes each day, making sure they fit etc. were steps you knew to take, probably from experience. And now in retrospect, you can see steps that could have been taken to improve the overall outcome (practicing your different voices). This example completely illustrates the benefits of doing a “Post-mortem”. As you stated “there are some circumstances that cannot be planned or prepared for ahead of time”, however, I suspect now, having had this experience, you could plan to either avoid this in the future or create a contingency plan that would allow you to complete the project to your desired outcome.
Again MaryLei, great example! And thanks for being someone who makes a difference!
Marne
Marne & Rasheeda,
ReplyDeleteFirst of all here is the link to the clowns that I portrayed: http://picasaweb.google.com/testfaithccb/Clowning
I thought it best to keep a record for future reference.
Marne, you spoke about speaking with my SME, unfortunately she was not there every night when I did clowning. Often I went straight from work to the church and got into costume, and I will admit that the voices were not always my strong suit in clowning.
Rasheeda, the kids did enjoy the clowns and the voice problem was more of a me issue then anything else. I felt I failed on that and no one else did or even noticed it as a problem.
MaryLei
Hello MaryLei,
ReplyDeleteI loved your story. It seems to me that you researched the part of playing clown is this instance very well. You went to the computer for information as well as enlisting your mother's help who by all accounts acted the SME capacity.
The Pastor stated, "do what you want," he filled the PM's shoes in this instance. According to our book, the Pastor gave you the approval, which defined as, "must approve the results of an activity before work can proceed." (Portny, 2008, p. 303)
As for the "post mortem," now you basically know what you will do the next time in instance. I beleive that this situation was all new to you, as your clients probably told you what to do.
I think what you do is great for the kids. The kids, as far as I am concerned, are very lucky to have someone with your expertise to entertain them. It is obvious that you take your "clowining around" very seriously. :) Keep up the great work! :)
References:
Portny, S. E., Mantel, S. J., Meredith, J. R., Shafer, S. M., Sutton, M. M., & Kramer, B. E. (2008). Project management: Planning, scheduling, and controlling projects. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.