In the world of project management, some things can only be learned through experience. Despite my best efforts in my early years, I made plenty of mistakes managing projects. There’ve been times when I’ve felt confident in my strategy, only to walk right into an issue thereafter. “What was I thinking?”, I say to myself. “How did I not see that coming?”. I can also think back to times where I didn’t necessarily make a mistake, but would approach certain situations in a completely different way nowadays. It happens to all of us: every project manager makes mistakes, learns through experience and evolves over time. With that in mind, this article is meant to convey a few overarching lessons I’ve learned so young project managers out there can learn what I’ve learned the hard way. Here are five things I wish I knew as a young project manager.
What I Wish I Knew As A Young Project Manager…
Below is a brief summary of the five key lessons I wish I’d learned as a young project manager. I’ll get into a bit more detail about each in the following sections:
- No One Else Cares As Much As You Do
- You’re In The Middle
- Planning & Documentation Does Not Solve Everything
- Being More Comfortable With ‘Confrontations’ Is Essential
- Money Matters.
Let’s go through each of these a bit further!
1. No One Else Cares As Much As You Do
This is an expression that my first boss used all the time, and it’s unfortunately the truth. As the Project Manager, we’re the primary person responsible for a satisfactory completion of a project…the WHOLE project. Who else could possible care about it like we do (expect the client, of course)?
As well-intended as team members, contractors and vendors may be, they’re ultimately not the people who will be held accountable by clients and stakeholders – we are! At the end of the day, each of those people have their own business or job to worry about. They’ve got to care about their specific duties on our projects, sure, but when it comes to the entire project as a whole, it’ll be all but impossible to find someone else who cares as much about your project’s overall outcome as you do.
In turn, it becomes our responsibility to drive the project home, obtain results and utilize time and resources in the most efficient way possible. As a young project manager, it can be uncomfortable being in this position for the first time! Thankfully, it gets easier.
Related: How Project Managers Waste Their Time: Avoid Doing These 13 Things
2. You’re In The Middle
In terms of positioning, the Project Manager falls smack-dab in the middle of every aspect of a project. We act as the liaison between our team mates and upper management. We’re the point of contact for our clients and any of their representatives. We are the intermediary between vendors / subcontractors and the client, as well as the intermediary between vendors and contractors, too. Project Managers are always in the middle.
Being the middle-person can feel overwhelming if you’ve never experienced it before. Being in this position requires one to juggle a variety of responsibilities and relationships.
The advice I give? Just dive in. There’s no way to get better at juggling the responsibilities of a project manager than to gain first-hand experience.
“Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.
-Bruce Lee
Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”
Much like the message of the quote above, we must adapt to each of these dynamics and work with these ‘forces’ on our projects. After all, they’re not going away anytime soon. There’s an art and a science to keeping things flowing between parties.
Need short-n-sweet advice? Focus on transparency, efficiency and staying one step ahead. The longer answer involves experiencing as many situations as you can, stepping outside your comfort zone, developing your own style and trusting yourself.
As a young project manager, I wish I had paid more attention to these various relationships that P.M.s must uphold on a project and how to keep things flowing smoothly between them.
Related: Managing Older Employees As A Young Manager: Some Realities To Consider
3. Planning & Documentation Does Not Solve Everything
Perhaps I was just naive, but I put a lot of stock in the value of documentation as a young project manager. I thought that by having an email record of a conversation or a clause in a written agreement, we’d be golden. Unfortunately, this is not true.
Proper project documentation is essential, no doubt. We should strive to cover as many facets of our project as we can in written contracts and the like. We should also utilize email to document conversations and project details.
What blindsided me is the fact that despite having documentation, it won’t matter in some situations.
Even if a vendor fails to deliver on a promise they make in writing, the project will still be behind and we’re still tuck with the problem. We can reprimand the vendor as a P.M., but the client will be looking at us when their project is delayed (see sect. 2).
Our contract with a construction subcontractor may include them doing x, y and z on our project, but if they’re ‘in the red’ on the project and don’t have financial incentive to do the work i.e. the remaining amount of money they’re owed is not worth collecting, they may just walk away from the project. Want to sue? The legal fees will likely cost more that the amount in dispute and the work still won’t be done.
Proper documentation is absolutely critical, but it does not solve all the problems we’ll face on our projects.
Related: How Do You Organize Project Documentation? A Few Must-Know Methods
4. Being More Comfortable With ‘Confrontations’ Is Essential
Even the smoothest projects will still feature disputes, misunderstandings and disagreements. In order to navigate these situations, a project manager must be at least somewhat comfortable with confrontation.
You might be thinking exactly what I did as a young project manager: why can’t everyone just do their job, take responsibility for their own duties and work together?
Here’s the thing. Even if all parties WANT the project to play out like that, we’re all human. Mistakes will be made. Misinterpretations happen. Situations will occur that catch everyone by surprise. This will all still happen with good intentions! When we consider that some people or organizations act selfishly, cut corners and have not-so-good intentions, the need for assertiveness becomes even more self-evident.
I realize that this point might seem to contradict sect. 2 above – the need to maintain flow between parties and to ‘be like water’. My response? Just because a river is rough, does not mean it won’t take you to the right destination!
While the word ‘confrontation’ has a negative connotation, it’s not so sinister in the world of project management. As opposed to WWE-style showdowns, confrontation in this case means to stand your ground, not shy away from tough conversations and hold people or organizations accountable when necessary. These are traits of a manager who can handle ‘rough seas’ assertively while still remaining tactful. This point ultimately applies to managers, leaders and business owners in any industry.
If you’re interested in reading more about this topic, check out our articles on being direct in the workplace without being a jerk and also, how to manage jerks as a project manager!
5. Money Matters.
The vast majority of us learn about the importance of money from a very early age. Save your money, get a good job, live within your means, etc. – all that good stuff. Let’s not even get started on the spending aspect!
For some reason, though – and maybe it’s just me – the skills required to manage money in any reasonably significant way are not taught very often. We’re told how important money is, but rarely on what to actually do once we’re in charge of it. Thus, things like managing a budget, cost tracking and cashflow are only really taught in financial disciplines and good ol’ fashion business experience, despite money being a big part of our lives as a whole.
As a young project manager, it’s very important to learn about how to manage projects from a financial perspective. Here are some concepts that I knew nothing about in my early years that I wish I learned sooner:
- Consistent Billing & Revenue: Keeping money coming in the door each month is important for the project and for our businesses as a whole. Many business costs are fixed, and project-specific costs must be paid for before money is actually collected for the work that was done. With this in mind, getting money in the door on a regular basis (profitably!) and keeping the bank account full are some of the most important skills a project manager can have.
- Forecasting Costs: While knowing the latest cost and profitability figures on our projects is important, it’s even more important to know how costly and profitable our projects will be to finish. Believe me, there’s nothing worse than being profitable for several months, only to see that profit margin dwindle each month as the project comes to a close. Forecasting completion costs on a regular basis will catch these potential cost overruns early and give you time to avoid them altogether or at least keep other stakeholders in the loop.
- Money Is An Incentive: Sad but true. If you need a vendor or contractor to get tasks 1, 2 and 3 done, tie it to them getting paid. Said another way, “get tasks 1, 2 and 3 done, and you’ll be paid x-amount.”
I could go on, but I’ll end with restating the importance of learning and understanding all things financial-related as a young project manager!
Lessons For Young Project Managers: In Summary
If you’re a young project manager looking to up your skills, you’ll likely find that many of them will only come through experience. My goal is always to teach others the lessons I’ve had to learn the hard way so you all can skip right to the good stuff! I hope this article has been helpful in that regard.
