The Accidental Project Manager

I’ve lived in the digital marketing world for nearly ten years now, moving between traditional agencies, media publishers, and entrepreneurial startups in various project management and production roles. Throughout that time, one thing remained constant: I never chose to be a project manager. In fact, I just kind of fell into it. I was an accidental project manager.  It makes sense, though. Think back to when you were a child and you were sitting around at school. Imagine the teacher  asking the class what everyone wants to be when they grow up. How many of you looked beyond the doctors, the pro hockey players, and the astronauts and genuinely wanted to craft Gantt charts? Or groom a backlog? None I hope, and if you did, then you probably fall outside the scope of this post.

 

The Path to Project Management

For those of us who didn’t always aspire to such heights, the path to project management is often similar. While we were working in other careers, we discovered an aptitude for certain skills we then developed -- organization, communication, and most importantly, time management. When you add a willingness to learn, technical proficiencies, and a knack for filtering out the peripheral noise to keep a project’s goal in sight, you have the foundation for a pretty solid project manager. While most of these can be learned along the way, it’s the less tangible (but critical) softer skills that elevates the practice from a science to an art.  As I transition my career from project management to content strategy (something I always aspired for), indulge me as I reflect back and highlight some of the softer skills that helped me navigate through those years. Anyone can take a tutorial on how to build a user story, but these are the lessons that I learned through experience -- often the hard way.

 

Less Science, More Art

A recent study of Fortune 500 companies identified the number one predictor of a project manager’s effectiveness as stakeholder partnership. Securing the buy-in of a project’s stakeholders helps build its foundations, and nurturing those relationships throughout the project’s lifecycle can be the most powerful asset in your toolkit. As you maneuver these multiple personalities on top of your project’s budget, scope, and timelines, here are six key tenants to serve as your beacon.

• Trust. Build it by following through on deliverables, earn it by executing on them to a high standard, and maintain it by identifying and mitigating risks early and with composure and grace. Without your team’s trust, you’re impotent. 
• Communicate, communicate, and communicate some more. You may feel like working in a silo projects an image of confidence and competence, but the moment a stakeholder is blindsided by anything negative that illusion will be shattered. And with it, any good will and trust you’ve built up will be lost and the battle to rebuild it will be an uphill one. Centralizing communications in a web-based tool (we like Basecamp) helps add an additional layer of transparency and added security. 
• Encourage collaboration and continuous improvement. Each of your team members are subject matter experts, but it’s when those expertise overlap and different disciplines work together that the true magic of your project happens. No one has a monopoly on a good idea. 
• Advocate for the project. Your account team is your client’s advocate and your team leads are your team’s. Your role is to bridge these often competing demands, and the most effective way to do this is to always advocate for what’s best for the project. And often, this means just saying no. 
• Build consensus. You’ll encounter many instances where a decision needs to be made, often with key stakeholders in disagreement. Table options for discussion, outline their pros and cons, and above all else, make sure there are no surprises. If you can, communicate with the stakeholders individually in advance and find any common ground before you meet as a team to negotiate. Your role as an honest broker will help continue to build you trust and respect. 
• Empathize. Perhaps the most valuable skill you can learn is empathy. It helps you understand your client’s needs, your management team’s business imperatives, and your team member’s pain points. And as much as you do have to say no, sometimes you just have to swallow your pride and say yes -- to added scope, shifting timelines, or unreasonable requests. When that happens, empathize with your team. Understand and appreciate their frustrations with the ask. If nothing else, it means that they care.

 

The Next Chapter

As I close this chapter of my career and embark into content creation, these are the lessons that I hope to carry with me. Managing budgets, documentation, and timelines are tangible skills that are specific to project management and, assuming a basic foundation, can be easily taught. But the lessons that I learned through experience, much of it tough, offer an invaluable wellspring of knowledge from which I can draw the confidence for this change. If sharing them here can embolden other budding accidental project managers, then all the better.