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OK USC: Case Study
Standardizing project management without breaking a flat work culture
Context
Real ownership, but too many unfinished projects
OK is one of USC's creative incubators, where students pitch projects and get resources for a semester at a time, run on an intentionally flat structure, no fixed hierarchy. That gave people real ownership, but also meant most projects barely crossed the finish line by the semester before I joined leadership. My own project was the exception, because I'd built my own structure for it, which is what got me brought onto the e-board as Project Management Lead to do the same thing for all five teams the following semester.
What was needed
A standard system for wildly different projects
OK welcomed any kind of creative project, so the incubator needed a shared system flexible enough to fit wildly different work, from card games to furniture pieces, without forcing every team into the same process. It also needed to be something people would actually use: the club had already tried optional versions that didn't stick, and the semester before I joined, only 1 of 6 teams was using any structured planning tool at all.
Work I did
Structure that fit the culture instead of fighting it
I started by giving everything a home: a unified planning space in Notion, one page per team. The first real constraint was time. I could build a shared space, but I only had so many days to onboard and tailor it to five teams before their projects got underway, so I prioritized the largest and most complex teams first, since they had the most to lose from starting without structure, and worked down from there.
The bigger problem wasn't the tool, it was adoption. Three things were killing it: expectations and tools weren't established before projects got underway, teams were encouraged to operate "headless," without a lead, so no one owned using the system, and a one-size-fits-all version didn't fit projects different enough that teams used it wrong or gave up on it. So I set aside one-on-one time with each lead to personalize it and set expectations for how it would actually be used.
There was real pushback from leadership, too. OK's culture was built around being flat and deliberately "no-boss," and structured leadership ran against that on principle. So when I introduced a project lead role, the real work was finding a version of ownership that gave projects someone accountable, without recreating the hierarchy the club had intentionally built itself against.
What Changed
MVP completion up 40%, then adopted club-wide
Adoption grew from 1 of 6 teams the semester before to all 5 teams I worked with directly, and MVP completion rose 40% at the semester check-in, measured against complete MVP state before and after the framework. It was later adopted program-wide, beyond the five teams I ran it with directly.
What I Learned
What actually makes a system stick
Three things sit underneath this: set expectations and vision early, before people are already underway. Respect the culture you're operating inside instead of overriding it. And build for the specific needs in front of you instead of one version meant to fit everyone, that's usually what breaks adoption.
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