Small Talk
What’s the one skill
every project manager
should have?
Positive attitude and
the ability to connect
with other people, to
bring people together.
What’s the best pro-
fessional advice you
ever received?
Interpret everything
you hear with positive
intent.
What book has special
meaning for you?
Switch: How to Change
Things When Change
Is Hard by the Heath
brothers. It’s a series
of stories about how
positive change was
effected by someone
who had neither budget
nor authority. That’s
often the role of a
project manager.
What’s your favorite
off-the-clock activity?
Gardening. It’s very
similar to project
management: You’re
creating an environment where your team
can flourish.
What does project management entail at
VSA Partners?
There’s the tactical part of project management:
establishing our best practice project toolkit and
processes, streamlining what we do and reassessing to ensure continuous improvement. Then
there’s the human-centered part. In project management, hard skills are necessary to be good, but
soft skills are necessary to be great. You have to be
an excellent financial manager and create excellent project plans, but you also have to understand
your team and be able to bring people together.
How do you develop project managers’
people skills?
I focus on understanding our team members and
the environment each one needs. Every role and
every person functions differently. Our project
managers have to create an environment where
their team members flourish. For a team to really
work, its members must be comfortable together.
The project manager helps people do that.
What’s one way you’ve improved those skills?
We did an improv workshop, which was excellent.
I wanted to give my project managers the ability
to think on their feet, to be a stronger voice in a
room and to be a little more flexible. Some project
managers tend to grab on to the hard skills, but
then they’re not so good off the cuff. The improv
class took them out of their comfort zone but in a
safe environment to help them all grow.
What process improvements have you
spearheaded?
One project that I’m particularly proud of is com-
posing our standard offerings playbooks. We’re
in a business where it’s crucial, especially in a
new business situation, to customize what we
do for each client. We also realize that this can
be extremely time-consuming. Especially with a
new client or prospect, we want to show value
up front and we’re often on a short timeline—we
needed some type of standardized offerings that
also allowed us to be nimble and personalized at
the same time. I led the team spearheading these
efforts, ensuring we have a playbook that says,
“Here’s what our standard procedure is, and
here’s how we make it unique for this client.”
Since launch, it’s proven to be an invaluable tool
used across the organization.
How do you know your changes have made
a difference?
Other people see the value of the work my team
does, and they request it. Whenever there’s a new
project, people say, “The first thing we’ve got to
do is get a project manager on this.” Now, every
project has a project manager.
How does having a seat on the leadership
team help?
It makes a big difference to my project managers that I am a member of the leadership team,
that their group is seen as equally important as
the strategy team or the design team. I always
say that the client-services person is the CEO
of every project and the project manager is
the COO. We are on equal footing with other
members of the team. So we want to elevate
the project manager beyond an administrative role to become a strategic-minded team
member. The leadership team’s support helps
accomplish that. PM
“We want to elevate the project manager
beyond an administrative role to become a
strategic-minded team member. The leadership
team’s support helps accomplish that.”
