Personal Career Transformation - Change is Everything

 

I haven’t written in a while. I changed jobs last summer, and in the process I stopped blogging. Alas. These things happen.

I went to a company that’s well-established and still growing. That growth has been exponential over the past few years, and now the organization is in a phase of getting comfortable with its new size and reach. There is a lot of churn, a lot of change… the very definition of VUCA.

It can be scary and confusing, but all of this churn and change is just another way of saying “there’s a lot of opportunity.” Who doesn’t love opportunity?!

My first week

I’m a Project Manager, and my new role in a new company was just that. I came in to support a growing startup division that had just been getting underway within the parent company. In my first day, I was in a meeting where I learned that this new division had just been funded… pretty much the day before. This was a very startup-ish situation.

The parent organization was already far more established, but the impacts of non-stop growth were leading to some changes there as well. PMs were being collected and reorganized into a newly formed IT PMO, new tools and processes were rolled out all over IT, all of IT realigned to support the business.

Overall, I had walked into an office in a constant state of flux. It was awesome.

Identifying the gap

As a PM, I was able to bring some structure and process to the new division. I also helped the newly forming PMO develop consistent templates and processes. We rolled out new tools and processes, shared ideas, and worked hard to deliver the most value to our stakeholders.

These choices were thought through and helpful, and most of all they improved our efficiency and our relationships with stakeholders. All of this is great. All of which leads to… more change.

I was only a couple of weeks into all of this when I saw that the implementations were rolling out well, but the rest of the changes were coming along more slowly. There was a gap in the organization from a change management perspective, which is pretty common in these situations.

Perhaps it was kismet or just dumb luck, but just as the company would benefit from change management, someone showed up who wanted to do just that.

Making it work

I’m now in the process of building a discipline in Change Management and Communication. It’s new and mostly happening in my spare time (it’s my nights-and-weekends job), but there is definite traction. This is new and strange for me too, and I’ll probably post a lot more about this over the coming months. I’ll also reach out for advice from the great minds out there on projectmanagement.com, LinkedIn, Twitter, wherever.

What I’ve learned so far

Project Management is incredibly useful. As a discipline, it’s broader than most.  I use the skills in the IT department, but also when I plan a vacation, buy a car, create Marketing workflows, and so much more. And now, I’m using the skills twofold:

1. To plan how to build a discipline (and eventually a department) from scratch.
2. To create structure and process to support Change Management and Communication.

It’s exciting and scary and new, and I will share the journey with all of you (and ask for your help A LOT along the way!) In fact, let’s start there…

What advice do you have as I embark on this adventure? What Lessons Learned can you share? What challenges have you faced on similar journeys? I want to hear from you!