Project Managers are Complexity Navigators

At my company, in the first few years we had a project management department, it was optional for other teams to work with us when they wanted to get things done. As much as this reality wasn’t my favorite, it certainly gave me a lot of practice in persuasion and put me in the habit of thinking about and communicating the value we offer as project managers.

That habit has served me well, even as other teams are now required to work with us in many situations. Projects go smoother and teams are more cohesive if people understand the value of working with us, even if it’s also required.

There are many ways project managers provide value to people, projects, and companies, and this value varies by circumstance. I’ve recently learned a new way to articulate one of the forms of value I provide: I am a complexity navigator. In this blog I’ll explain what I mean by this and how I help coworkers in this area. If it sounds like an aspect of your role, share this language and concept with folks who need a little extra persuasion to engage with you and everything you have to offer.

I can’t take credit for seeing myself as a complexity navigator; my boss was the first one to articulate my role in this way. We were brainstorming how to explain to a sponsor when they should contact a project manager. We knew we needed to clarify not only the timing, or what would constitute a project I can help with, but also how working with me would make their job better and easier.

Part of the reason this sponsor hadn’t worked with me much in the past is that they and their immediate team couldn’t really feel the downsides of not doing so. Planning and communication about their team’s work tended to happen within their team only, and aside from other teams occasionally wishing they understood this team’s work better, nothing really broke. So why should anything change?

Because, as my boss put it, our organization has changed in the last few years. We have become more sophisticated—for example, learning to be highly productive while working remotely, and collecting and leveraging more data than we ever have before, enabling us to make more data-driven decisions. But this sophistication, these new forms of value, means everything we do has become more complex. More people, teams, and software programs need to touch every product, service, or result before it’s released to the public.

And as these complexities have developed, I’ve become the expert in everybody’s role—who needs to be involved in what situations and what order of involving each person will be the most efficient and effective. I’ve personally broken down most project tasks and know how deliverables need to be handed off from one person to another. I’ve been in the trenches for the trial and error of different processes, putting me in an ideal position to leverage past experience to make new projects run as smoothly as possible.

As an experienced project manager, I’m the best person to navigate projects and sponsors through our new complexities to achieve the most project benefits with the fewest downsides—especially delays and rework.

I never tell another person at my company not to run their own projects just because it’s not their job. I want my coworkers to understand good project processes and to be willing to get their hands dirty in our project software—and God knows, in the right situation where the downsides are minimal, I’ll gladly take the help!

But most of the time, I have a lot of value to provide by being the one to chart a project’s path from idea to reality. I am a complexity navigator that helps my company achieve the most projects and the most value it can, with the fewest headaches along the way.