What's the first thing you should have when you take on this responsibility?

My name is Sugaya, and I specialize in corporate branding and promotion.

I will be talking about the theme, "What if you suddenly found yourself in charge of a major project representing your company?"

For example, it could be being selected to be in charge of creating a showroom that will become a symbol of the company. Of course, you wouldn't have the skills or experience for that role. Many of the people who contact us are in exactly this kind of situation and are struggling with it.

In such a situation, what is the "first thing you should have"?

If you're interested, please bear with me for a moment.

 

Things you might fall into when you become "in charge"

When assigned to a task, most people's first thought is likely a sense of responsibility to "do it properly." They want to meet the company's expectations and avoid making mistakes. These feelings are perfectly natural.

However, as a result, a strong sense of responsibility and mission can sometimes lead to an obsession with simply completing the tasks assigned by the company, or an excessive focus on simply pushing the project forward.

When this happens, even if you feel like you're making progress, in reality, you're not making much progress, and when unresolved issues arise, you end up waiting for decisions from higher-ups, leading to further stagnation—a vicious cycle that is easy to fall into.

This happened when I was involved in a showroom design project some time ago.

The person in charge told us that they wanted to "simply translate the company's requests into reality," and we followed that policy, prioritizing meeting those requests in our proposals.

However, in the final stages, I was asked this by the management team:

"What was the thinking behind this plan?"

The person in charge was unable to answer that question properly.

As a result, this project had to be restarted from the planning stage. What was the reason for this?

 

What is expected of the person in charge?

In reality, the request from upper management was simply a direction, indicating "we want you to think based on this kind of image." The true intention was for the team to use this as a starting point to further refine the overall theme and discuss it until it could be translated into concrete proposals. Simply reflecting the request as is would have resulted in vague themes and proposals.

The role of a person in charge is not simply to convey the company's opinions and drive the project forward.

How did you interpret the task assigned by the company? And, "Why were you chosen to be in charge?" Your thoughts on the task, including these aspects, are required.

Of course, you don't need to have the correct answer from the start.

If you find it difficult to express your own opinion, one approach is to start by listening to the opinions of those around you little by little.

I'll talk to internal members and project stakeholders to organize their thoughts.

Simply conveying opinions like, "This is what we've received," or "This is what I think," can significantly change the progress of a project.

In other words, the first thing a person in charge should have is a framework based on "their own perspective on the problem." In fact, in this case, after organizing the problem based on the person in charge's perspective, the process from planning to approval proceeded smoothly. Having your own perspective or not makes a huge difference in the accuracy of the problem analysis.

The role of a person in charge is to think for themselves and take action to achieve the company's objectives. I believe that being aware of this is the first step in taking on this role.

If you're suddenly put in charge of a project, I hope you'll remember this story.