Your job is a werewolf. Not you or your coworkers, the job itself.
Think about a month in your chair. Some people have monthly tasks, such as a month-end report, that are scheduled and make a certain time of month more difficult than the rest. Others have a less lunar calendar and more of a project-based version, but there is still an ebb and flow to the work. If you have a job that is one way most of the time, but regularly becomes an insane crunch to finish something by a deadline, then your job is a werewolf.
Much like the monster from the movies, it’s not the werewolf’s fault. It is what it is. The story is more about figuring it out than it is about the horrible monster, even though the monster does some terrible things, and in the end we usually feel sad for the poor thing when they shoot it with a silver bullet and it turns back into a person. They always make the person look peaceful, like they are finally free of the curse. Poor werewolf.
Except when the story is truly about the werewolf, from the point of view of the werewolf. Then it’s mostly about how to deal with it. Do they have a cage in the basement and a friend locks them up for the full moon? Do they go camping, strip off their clothes before the change so they don’t tear them up, and frolic in the woods? Do the people who care about them support and help them?
Yours is a story about the werewolf. It’s your job to keep the werewolf in check so that the rest of the world, mainly the customers you work with, never find out. Because if they do, they are watching the other kind of story, and as soon as they figure it out, they’re heading for the gun safe and Great Grandma’s locket to smelt a solution, which means they cancel the project and choose not to work with you in the future.
So, what do we do? Do we have a cage in the basement? While just letting things run wild may sound fun, that’s not how work gets done, and when it comes to the full moon of crunch time, everyone just has to leash themselves to their desks and get through it.
The most successful way to navigate werewolf jobs is with an effective work flow. If the step-by-step process leaves no questions and makes the best possible use of the time, you can avoid the whole issue. Be done well before the deadline and there’s never a crunch, as though you were able to submit the project and hit reset before the full moon. If that’s not possible, that work flow is your plan to get through it.
And we’ve all seen what happens if there is no plan. It’s bloody. First someone loses a pet, and then there’s a mysterious death, and before you know it there’s a full-town hunt for the creature. Plans are good. Call SkyTech. We’re good at that.