Your Skills Are Transferrable!

Early this month, I had the opportunity to work as a scriptwriter on a documentary celebrating 20 years of ministry.

In the beginning, I was the only one on the team, but as time went on, things started to clear up, and I had the chance to lead a team, but the project started out looking chaotic as with any project. So I decided to utilize my design skills to create a user journey and information architecture for the documentary, assigning tasks to team members based on ‘jobs to be done. This helped bring clarity and order to the project.

One of the challenges I faced was getting team members to deliver on their tasks. I learned the importance of patience and understanding my teammates’ perspectives. I also had to resist the urge to do tasks myself and instead focus on fostering teamwork.

In the end, we were able to create a beautiful documentary script without leaving anyone behind.

What I learned:

• As a leader, a lot is resting on your shoulders, and you must learn to navigate with wisdom, liaising between stakeholders’ demands and the current state of your team
  

• There will never be a perfect start. Start where you are and with what you have and as you navigate the project, as clarity comes, you iterate and keep iterating until you arrive at your goal.
  

• There are different people in a team there are those who need to be cajoled and constantly reached out to until the job is done, and there are those who take initiative. Both kinds of people are good in a team, as long as you know how to work with them.
  

• ⁠You need patience and wisdom when dealing with your team members because they have a life outside of the job or whatever project or task you’re working on. Be kind to people!
  

• Finally, your skills are transferrable. Choosing to work on the IA and journey saved my life and saved us time.

I hope you find this useful!

PS: Don’t get stuck chasing only design roles when you can use your knowledge to achieve great success.