The Indomitable Project Manager

In the evolving landscape of project management, distinguishing yourself involves more than just managing tasks and timelines. It's about embodying resilience, innovation, and leadership—qualities that define an indomitable project manager. This guide delves into strategies and mindsets that can propel your project management career by leveraging challenges as opportunities for growth.

The Essential Trio for Project Success

We know that project managers in leadership roles must master the three core skill types: Hard Skills, Soft Skills, and Domain Knowledge. These are the foundation for elevating your contributions to the company.

• Technical (Hard) Skills: Beyond basic project management knowledge, the advanced PM must explore and adopt advanced methodologies and technologies that can streamline project delivery. There are some interesting hybrid methodologies out there, such as CCPM and ScrumBan. CCPM (Critical Chain Project Management) is a method of planning and managing projects that emphasizes the resources required to execute project tasks, focusing on reducing project duration and allowing flexibility in resource allocation. It is a hybrid because it can be applied in a Waterfall or Agile context. ScrumBan is what is sounds like, a combination of Scrum and Kanban. It incorporates the structure of Scrum with the flow-based approach of Kanban, so is ideal for projects needing continuous improvement within an agile framework.

• Interpersonal (Soft) Skills: Effective communication, negotiation, and conflict resolution are paramount as you grow your PM career. At a Silicon Valley tech leader, I was driving the global rollout of a new tech platform. Often, I felt that my role was akin to being a diplomat. The objective was to replace the legacy platform in each country around the world as rapidly as possible, but when I met with the country leaders, many times they would point out that not all their critical features were yet live in the product. I had to balance pushing the product and engineering team on adding key features, while simultaneously pushing back on the country teams to redefine their “must haves” and embrace the new platform before it was perfect. Project Management leaders have to be able to influence all sides, but while maintaining high quality relationships. It is a balancing act.

• Domain Knowledge: Advanced Project Managers understand the context of their projects. Does the project involve a customer-facing product? Leaders deeply understand the product and technology they support and become trusted partners for those functional leaders. Are your projects involving sales and marketing? Advanced PMs take the time to learn everything there is to know about the company strategy, the sales strategy, approach, and operations, and the marketing strategy and operations. Again, the goal is to be seen as a partner. Finally, staying abreast of industry trends and challenges not only enhances your strategic planning but also positions you as a thought leader.

Cultivating an Unstoppable Mindset

Focusing on the Essential Trio above will make you a top-notch project manager. But I believe one additional quality will make you stand out more than any other with senior management: Being unstoppable.

• Resilience in the Face of Adversity: Project managers run into roadblocks all the time. Besides planning your projects, the primary job role is to ensure your projects stay on track and deliver the business outcomes. As a junior project manager, when you encounter obstacles, you raise them to your boss. But, as a senior project manager, you are expected to do everything within your power to resolve obstacles as well as alerting your stakeholders about the issues and your plans to address them. To be seen as a director-level professional, your leaders are looking for you to no longer just report problems but solve them. They will notice whether you hit a wall and say, “Someone needs to solve this” or whether your bounce off the wall and immediately search for alternatives:

  • Resolve the blocking issue

  • Facilitate the resolution of the blocking issue

  • Go around the blocking issue (solve it in a different way than originally planned)

  • Adjust the project to take the blocking issue off the critical path

  • Leverage an executive to solve the blocking issue

  • Use a personal favor to solve a blocking issue

You get the picture. You will not be able to solve everything every time, but your leadership is looking for someone who.will.not.give.up.

• Proactive Problem Solving: Embrace challenges as opportunities to innovate. Even better than being the person who resolves a project blocker is being the person who proactively identifies it and solves it before it ever becomes a problem. This requires you to understand the relative importance of each key milestone and deliverable on your projects, as well as the ultimate business outcomes you are working to achieve. That way, when the inevitable delays and blockers surface, you can quickly assess which are truly on the critical path and focus immediately on resolution. Again, keep your leaders informed and they will be pleased that you are fully on top of the project.

• The Power of Positive Thinking: Maintaining a positive outlook can transform the project atmosphere and inspire your team. As an advanced-level project manager, you will lead enterprise-critical initiatives, which also come with the biggest challenges. The team (project managers, but also functional leaders) is looking to you to set the environment. Projecting a “can do / can solve” positive attitude goes a long way in ultimately delivering your project and impressing your leadership. The key word is “projecting”. As the leader of a complex program, you may want to yell and stomp from time to time. The point is to “go below the line” only in safe situations around trusted friends or family. In front of the team, with your leaders watching, you are the embodiment of the belief in the team and the project.

Strategies for Overcoming Common Project Management Challenges

Project management professionals face numerous challenges that can derail even the most meticulously planned projects. From managing scope creep to ensuring stakeholder alignment and adapting to change, each aspect requires a thoughtful approach to navigate effectively. Here are practical strategies for overcoming these common project management hurdles:

• Managing Scope Creep: Even as a new project manager, you will have to deal with scope creep. It is never-ending and pervasive. As a consultant early in my career, we had the second complexity which is that allowed scope creep both put our project at risk and impacted our contractual SOW, and therefore money. The easiest options are to always say yes or always say no. But it is never that simple. As the leader of your project, you need a big picture view of the ongoing risks to your project in order to make a quick judgment call on whether to allow or reject additional scope. I find that the following factors guide my decision best:

  • Business Outcomes: The ultimate “why” for the existence of your project is to deliver the required business outcomes. As the project manager, you should know these like your life depends on them, and make sure the project is tracking to deliver them. Deliverables and milestones only exist in service to the business outcomes. The first question I ask when evaluating additional scope is, “Is this required to deliver a business outcome?” If it is, then I do everything in my power to add it in.

  • Schedule: Will the additional scope impact your schedule? How important is it that you deliver on time? Sometimes, you can add scope and make someone happy without any impact at all. Or sometimes, the additional scope is more important than the schedule. You need to make the call.

  • Phase 2: Can you break additional scope into a fast-follow release? If so, that can be a catch-all for scope add requests.

  • Executive Sponsor’s POV: I always make sure I understand their attitude about scope requests, hitting milestones, etc. They may care more about getting it right than getting it on time. You need to know where they fall on the spectrum.

Regardless of how you handle scope creep, it is crucial that you have a process for capturing, documenting, and communicating changes to your plan of record. I have seen projects go downhill by clarity issues around what is and is not in scope.

• Ensuring Stakeholder Alignment: AI will impact project management profoundly, but one area AI cannot master is collaborating effectively across varying groups of people. As the leader of your project, you must work tirelessly to ensure all your stakeholders are “rowing in the same direction.” Stakeholders can be quite a diverse group, depending on your type of project. They are certainly your team members and the functions that they represent. But there are also tangential functions as well as senior executives across the entire company. Your CEO doesn’t need to know the details of your project, but they should be aware of it in general and its overall status towards delivering those all-important business outcomes that led to your project approval in the first place. Here are some of the ways I keep my stakeholders aligned:

  • Transparent Status: Within the project team, I prefer sharing all status openly. Not so tracks that are behind can feel bad, but so the entire team understands that we are all in this together and if anyone can help across tracks and functions, they are appreciated. I have seen many people step up to help the lagging group cross the finish line.

  • Level of Status Reports: The higher up your stakeholder is in the organization, the smaller your status report should be. C-level execs should get something along the lines of, “Project XYZ: Tracking to two weeks late (New ETA date) due to issue with vendor supply backlog. Team working to identify alternate vendors to get back on track. Procurement team assisting.”

  • Meet Leaders How They Prefer to Be Met: Each executive stakeholder has a preferred engagement style. Figure out what that is for each and align with them that way. I had a General Manager on one of my projects that wouldn’t read an emailed status report for any reason, but she welcomed unscheduled phone calls. I came to find that this is because her inbox was impossible to manage, so voice was her preference. I had a Product VP who preferred I meet with her in person every few weeks, so I did that. I had a CFO who wanted access to the project work management tool so he could view his own dashboard and status any time he was curious. Adapt your style to each executive and they will prefer working with you over project managers who are less flexible.

• Adapting to Change: In today's fast-paced environment, the ability to pivot is essential. There will be times you cannot under any circumstance avoid the project slipping. But your efforts to search for all possible solutions will not go unnoticed. And that will make all the difference. Most people have difficulty with change. Top leaders are looking for project managers who not only can handle change but thrive in it. At one company, I was working for months on a project to divest one of our divisions. Suddenly, I found out that our entire company was going to be acquired and the divestiture was shelved. After an initial head shake and a jaw drop, I met with my boss and said, “Okay, what do we need to do to shelve the divestiture project, and then what do you need on the acquisition planning?” Like everyone else, I was worried what the acquisition might mean for me, but as a Director of Project Management, my focus was on understanding the situation, planning the work, and working the plan.

The No-Executive Surprises Mantra

Always keep your project executive sponsor informed. No, that doesn’t mean every little detail. Instead, your thoughts should be, “What if their boss asks them about my project?” So, any questions will be along the lines of, “Will it deliver on time? Are there any potential risks that could derail it? Does the project manager have it under control?” Here are some things I regularly use to make sure my executives are never surprised by my projects:

• Maintaining Open Lines of Communication: The first is obvious, I regularly update my executive sponsor about the status of the project, active and potential issues and risks, and things I need them to do to help. Don’t neglect their help. I remember discussing a conflict between our project and the Legal department that could derail our go live with my executive sponsor, and he said, “I will talk with the head of Legal and get it resolved.” I offered to handle it myself, but he said, “This is something I can handle better than you because of my level and her level. But I am glad to be able to help the project where I can.” Your leaders want you to resolve roadblocks yourself, but when you can’t they are always willing to use their leverage to move mountains where you couldn’t.

   

• Building Executive Relationships: Besides your executive sponsor and your boss, to be an effective project manager at a director or above level, you need to build solid relationships with executives across your company. I made an effort to get to know leaders across all business functions, and not just those that were related to my projects (though I made extra special efforts for those). Some of these opportunities came at company dinners, where I would sit near a leader I didn’t know very well. Or, when I had an opportunity to present my project to a senior group of leaders. The point was to show I cared about their area of responsibilities and understood how my project supported and related to them. And that was also when I demonstrated my domain knowledge, like peppering in comments about the overall company strategy and my relation to that. Several career moves came from my interactions with executives outside of my function, so always nurture your internal (and external, of course) network.

Conclusion: Charting Your Path to Indomitability

Becoming an indomitable project manager is a journey marked by continuous learning, resilience, and the ability to inspire those around you. By mastering the essential skills, adopting an unstoppable mindset, and maintaining a strategic approach to challenges and communication, you can elevate your career to new heights. Remember, the essence of being unstoppable lies not in the absence of obstacles but in the relentless pursuit of excellence in the face of adversity.