The College Touch: Paving the Way for New Professionals

Mishirika Scott is the Director, IT PMO at UCLA Anderson School of Management, ad former Project Manager of Student Success Systems at California State University, Los Angeles (Cal State LA). She is the managing partner of Riche Professionals, LLC (a jr. project manager training company) and she values robust engagement with emerging professionals.

  Career Development   Communications Management   New Practitioners  

I remember the time before I became a project manager. No one knew my name except my family, classmates and closest friends, of course. I was a college student, and I filled my days with studies, assignments, due dates, job searches, exercise, planning and dreams.

Fast-forward a decade later, and my schedule as a project manager hasn't changed much—I traded in the classroom for boardrooms, assignments for deliverables, classmates for teammates, lesson plans for lessons learned, and an Outlook calendar that I fill with, well, busyness.

Project managers have become a lot like the Road Runner cartoon character: gulp coffee—beep beep! 8 a.m. meeting—beep beep! Phone conference—beep beep! Update project docs, scroll missed calls, respond to urgent emails, eat lunch (hopefully)—beep beep! It's this marriage to the busyness that often leads to a less-than-intentional approach to getting things done. Productivity is not measured by how well a person can go into autopilot to check off items on a long to-do list rapidly. Instead, productivity consists of measurable outcomes, engagement and meaningful impact.

When planning your next webinar, presentation, article, post, blog or social media comment, consider adding “the college touch” by choosing words, scenarios and tooltips that reflect the values and experiences of college …

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