Managing a Mature Career

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

  Career Development  

During the first few years of our careers, we are able to make fairly rapid progress. We move from introductory roles to slightly more senior ones, we gain new skills that we can put into practice, and we are given more responsibility. Our positions and job titles likely change reasonably frequently, and it is easy to see tangible growth.

That applies to many different professions. And with project management frequently being something that people move into after they have already been working for a few years, the start of a PM career can feel like an extension of that initial rapid growth. Just as we start to slow down from those first few years of progress, we get a reset and advance rapidly within project management as we gain skills and experience in that discipline.

However, progress inevitably starts to slow as our careers mature. As we become more senior PMs, diversify into related disciplines like program or portfolio management, or shift to functions like PMOs, so the opportunities become fewer. At the same time, the expectations of the role increase and we need to build a track record of success before being able to compete for those opportunities.

This flattening of the growth curve occurs in virtually every profession, every industry, and every global region. It is perfectly normal, and is something that we are all prepared for.

But what happens as …

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