Bringing order to chaos is a valid career path & other things I’ve learned as a project manager…

Photo by Greg Rosenke on Unsplash

A few weeks ago, I co-presented a breakout session at UW-Whitewater’s Student Leadership conference, titled “Control Your Chaos: Organization Tips to Solve Problems and Manage Anxiety.” The main point of the presentation was to share practical information with college students about challenges they will be facing when they get out into the working world and how to deal with them effectively, and it felt like a timely topic to me because I keep hearing that younger folx these days are battling anxiety on levels we haven’t seen historically. In my career as a project manager, I’ve learned some strategies and best practices to help battle this chaos in my working life, and I was really excited to share them with these students, and spread the word that there are entire careers to be made of these practices.

It’s not something we always lead with when we talk about project management, but one of the things I find most compelling about project management is that it is fundamentally about organization. Having a plan. Following the plan. Tweaking the plan when needed, and re-orienting to it. All of these practices help bring a bit of order to what can feel like a wildly chaotic situation (especially at the beginning of a project).

So much of my working life has been some form of the following story: I get assigned to a project that is in chaos, and I’m asked to step in, size it up, bring some order to the chaos, and get things back on-track. I’m not talking Olivia Pope/Scandal-level train wrecks, but I’ve been at the helm of more than one situation where multiple teams couldn’t work together simply because they had no way of sharing information, finding decisions that had been made, or reporting out consistently on what they had done versus what still needed to be done.

I never felt like I did something extraordinary in these situations- sometimes I built a SharePoint site and just insisted that everyone use it in a way that kept documents organized and together. Sometimes, I set up a weekly meeting and made sure everyone from all teams spoke up and shared updates. None of these things are complicated tactical solutions, but they’re all needed to get teams aligned and moving in the same direction.

And, then it hit me- what’s beautiful about these solutions is that they’re something that anyone can do. Literally anyone can create a website for a team to use. Anyone can put a standing meeting on a calendar. Anyone can send a link to a shared document instead of an attachment. These simple practices can yield massive benefits for a project team, and more importantly, these simple practices can combine to become an entire career. And, that’s pretty cool for kids like me who had no idea what I wanted to be when I graduated college- the thought that I could follow my instincts to organize things and walk away with an actual paying job?!? I had no idea that was possible when I was in college, and I really hope that some of the students who attended walked away with new ideas about what’s possible in creating a career they love.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

What have you learned about turning your instincts into a career? Have you been surprised by what it turns out you can get paid to do? Leave me a comment or a DM- I’d love to keep this conversation going!