How do I link multiple workbooks with dropdown lists?

I'm kind of stuck with a weird problem and a bit of help would be super nice.

In my workplace, we do all out project management under one Google sheets workbook. So, there are around 25 sheets, 20 writers and 5 managers.

Each writers sheet has a dropdown list of the manager where the assigned managers are listed and each managers sheet has a dropdown list for their respective writers. However, the process isn't automated, and for that reasons, managers have to manually find the tasks assigned to the writers and make bring them to their sheet which is both time consuming and leaves the room for a lot of error.

So, I was planning on automating the entire thing. In that case, whenever the managers are assigned a project, as in, the task is assigned to someone on the writers sheet, the details go directly to the writers and vice versa, where changing the managers name in the writers sheet will send the task details to the respective manager.

Is there any way we could make it happen? I tried using VLOOKUP but it keeps getting complicated. Any help would be super nice, thak you!