The Digital Project Manager

How to Pivot into Project Management from Any Career Background

• Galen Low and Kelsey Alpaio

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Thinking about pivoting into project management but feeling lost in a sea of acronyms and conflicting advice? You’re not alone. The path to becoming a PM can seem unclear, with vague skill requirements and misleading job descriptions making it even harder to break in.

Host Galen Low sits down with Barbara Kephart, founder of Projects Pivot, to cut through the confusion. They dive into what it really takes to transition into project management, how to decode industry jargon, and why community support is key to navigating this rewarding career shift.

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Galen Low:

You've read through that “how to become a project manager” article 15 times now, and now you are sure; you are absolutely sure that there were almost certainly far too many consonants and not enough vowels throughout. But somehow you're no closer to understanding how to pivot into project management. PMP, CAPM, RACI, Gantt, Monte Carlo... Is this the first test to weed out the weak-willed from entering the field? If you've been interested in pivoting your career into project management — but you haven't managed to get a clear answer out of Google, ChatGPT, or Perplexity, keep listening. We're gonna be doing a practical-tactical, no-nonsense exploration of what it really takes to figure out if pivoting into project management is the right decision for you. Hey folks, thanks for tuning in. My name is Galen Low with the Digital Project Manager. We are a community of digital professionals on a mission to help each other get skilled, get confident, and get connected so that we can amplify the value of project management in a digital world. If you want to hear more about that, head on over to thedpm.com/membership. And if you're into future-forward conversations and practical insights around digital project leadership, consider subscribing to the show for weekly episodes. Okay, today we're talking about how to make the pivot into project management and the role that community can play in decoding the rather opaque acronyms, and the vague skill requirements, and the misleading role descriptions that all too often prevent professionals from pursuing a rewarding career in leading projects. With me today is Barbara Kephart, the founder and Chief Project Officer at Projects Pivot — which offers a unique blend of dedicated project managers, strategic project portfolio guidance and practical PM training, creating a perfect formula for successful projects. Barb is also my partner in crime leading things at our community for new and aspiring project managers, The PM Coffee Spot. Barb, thanks for joining me today.

Barbara Kephart:

Thanks, Galen. It's always good hanging out with you.

Galen Low:

I know this is like a regular hangout, but we get to record it and share it with folks. It's funny because I'm told that like my intro is like my radio voice and then I like the episode starts and I'm like, we, so this is one of those.

Barbara Kephart:

You just go a regular day one?

Galen Low:

Yeah. If you're new to the show, I record my intro every time and sometimes I have cool friends on the show like Barb.

Barbara Kephart:

I don't have a radio voice, so I'm quite jealous.

Galen Low:

I don't know. With great power comes great responsibility. You know how it goes. You and I, we go way back. We each have been helping people get into project management, succeed at project management, learn project management, just navigate a career around project management. And we know it's hard for folks. There's lots of folks trying to learn about it, trying to figure it out, trying to see if it's for them without wasting too much time. I thought maybe I'd just start with a question that everyone wants to know the answer to, which is, why is project management such a hard career to get into and what's the biggest myth or misconception that you see preventing people from getting started in project management?

Barbara Kephart:

Yeah. Such a great way to start project management. I think we make it harder than we can be because those of us who love project manager, we try to make a lot of things harder than what it should be. And even when we manage project, we sometimes make it harder than what it could be. I think that in that we don't always sell ourselves as best as we could. I've been calling myself the geeky PM lately. They can solve all company's problems without being annoying or pushy. I remember somebody telling me once that we don't do pushy PMs in this company, and I thought, the geeky PM meaning that we love the details, we love getting in there and not everybody does. And actually that's a relief to companies to hear that. So feel free interview to borrow the geeky p wording. Because I think that's what people want, and I think once they hear that, it's not as hard to get in there because there's many of us who are trying to sell ourselves as getting into project management roles. But it's hard for those on the receiving end to know who can actually do it and who can't. I think those are the things that people really have to understand. And then to that point, I think we also make it harder on ourselves because we're stuck on job titles. We think that there needs to be the word project in a job title when we're applying for it, where we're thinking of advancing within our current organization that we work at. Many project management roles out there nowadays, I shouldn't say project management roles. Many positions that are out there nowadays have project management pieces built in, such as team lead or a program manager or an implementation manager, analyst workflow lead. Recently I came across a workflow lead that I was working with somebody on, and it was actually, she was working in an accounting firm at my accounting office, and I was like, you are managing projects, but you call yourself a workflow lead. I thought that was really good. And then the best one too, if you are really having a tough time getting in there to this field, is thinking about the admin role. Admin roles are just filled with project management in there, and once you get into an admin, you can make your way through the organization to get further and further advancing in there. And then sometimes they also, these positions fall in your lap. You might be the one that's doing the projects within a company, but you have nothing related to that in anything that you're doing anywhere else. But you've identified that there's a project because. Looking at it from a different view sometimes can help make it easier for you to be able to get into those positions.

Galen Low:

I love that.

Barbara Kephart:

Yeah. The next is just what you were talking about, the myth or misconception. So that one is also that people think they don't have enough experience. And I know you and I have talked about this a lot before, that people don't think they have enough experience managing projects. Many of us who love doing this. We've been doing it a long time. We're the ones who are planning the birthday parties. We've talked about this. What is the first project you've ever planned? Many people, it's something with their kids or their family. I know that while I was still wet, I wasn't even a project manager yet. I had a regular nine to five or plus a job as a healthcare provider.'cause I was also on call and I was on maternity leave with my second daughter and I was volunteering at her preschool. And within a week or so, because I was feeling better and I wasn't ready to go back to work yet, I had organized their art closet. I had created all new processes for all the kids, for every time on how to organize everything. But these are projects so people think that they don't have enough experience and they wouldn't know how to manage a project. Once you're in there and you have that aptitude to be a good project manager, it comes naturally. A lot of this we, I've talked about recently too with my colleague Laura Hartner, where we've been working on, because there are people that not only are project managers like you and I, which I'm sure we'll be talking about mentoring at some point.'cause you and I always get into the conversation around mentoring when we talk. But there are career transition specialists like Laura out there who can not only help you pivot in a way that we as project managers can do, but also can help you. Put all that down so that people on the receiving end of it, against all the other noise can help understand it. And I know she and I have created a couple of little e-learning or offerings that we call learning offerings that we call. Get a PM job around writing your PM resume and AC your PM interview. So those are my high level thoughts on whether it's hard or not.

Galen Low:

Are those courses available now?

Barbara Kephart:

Yeah, I'm just working on getting them out there. Our learning management system is called projectspractice.com.

Galen Low:

Gosh, okay. There's so much there that I want to dive into because actually I think the other sort of misconception you touched on first, which is that the bossy PM is a PM. And a lot of people, you're right, I don't think a lot of people have looked at it as the geeky PM, right? The person gets into the weeds and deals with complexity, but like it's a joy in a way to unravel the yarn. I definitely have seen people who are like, oh, I'm bossy. I'm gonna be a great PM. And then I've seen people say, oh, I'm not bossy. I probably won't be a good PM. And frankly, the person who is not bossy often I use the word bossy, like loosely, but like person who's yeah, I don't know if I really feel comfortable like telling people what to do. I've got a bit of imposter syndrome. I have to learn stuff that I don't know. Might actually be a better fit than somebody who's yeah, I'm just gonna go in and tell people what to do and then sit on my laurels, put my feet up, and then whenever something goes wrong, I'm gonna throw'em under the bus actually end up being the worst PMs and often other people who decide to pursue it and then realize it's really not for them. They're like, oh wait, what's this servant leadership? No. I didn't sign up for that. I think that's like a big barrier. And then the experience thing, I just think, yeah, it's been a thing for gosh, I did my PMP in 2014. I've been into project management for gosh, 15 years or more, and 15 years ago, probably even before that. That was the big thing, was like, oh, I don't know if I have enough experience. What is a project and how can I talk about it? If it wasn't my job title, can I still put it on my resume? Can I still talk about it in an interview? And that's been going on for decades and decades.

Barbara Kephart:

Yeah. Let's talk about the, whether you need a PMP or not right away, because I actually got mine later than you. I got mine in 2016. However, I had been managing projects for 25 years prior to that as part of my direct work that I was doing, healthcare provider plus working in healthcare. It, however, it just, I just never got to it and I wasn't working in a directly in A PMO at that point. And usually all the project management office folks got the PMP and none of the rest of us did. So it wasn't really a priority until it became available to me educational wise to go in and get my actual certificate in project management, followed by my p and p. And I think that there's also this belief that we need to have a certification after our name, before we can get the job. And I think that belief is being fed by the fact that many positions out there say they require a PMP. So back to what I was saying earlier is sometimes you might be focusing so much on the project management. Job role or the project manager job role and forgetting that a lot of these other jobs, you can still do your geeky project management in a different role that isn't called project manager. Maybe later you met might get the project manager role. For years, I didn't have a project manager role. I wanted it. But that would've meant I would've had to go into the project management office, and that means my director and myself wouldn't be able to manage the projects in the way that we were knowing that they were. We were doing a really good job at doing it. Because we would've had limitations, which are fine limitations to have as part of a project management office, especially enterprise wide. And then going back to what you said about the bossy PM Yes. Bossy PMs, a lot of times they're very good at getting in. They're very good at getting in the door. But be careful of that because I think there's an awareness now of the bossy PM. Yes, bossy PM when you interview and when you're going in, or when you're switching roles within your organization can be great because you're assertive. You're showing your stuff, you're doing it. However, bossy PMs don't work when the project is going sideways. In fact it couldn't ruffle more feathers than if you're more of the middle of the ground PM where you bossy when you need to be and calm when you need to be. And a combination. Everything in life is about balance and really having the ability to know when to stay quiet and know when to speak up is a huge asset that a project manager needs to have.

Galen Low:

I love that about balance. You also do a bit of an assessment with some of the folks who come through your mentorship program. I think you call it a seatbelt session and I think it's 'cause buckle up. We're gonna tell you something that you might not want to hear. No. But it's about have you got that balance and could project management be right for you? Have I gotten it right?

Barbara Kephart:

Yeah. So we have two things. We have a, something called a seatbelt session, and that's what we do with our companies that we work with and that's working with the leadership plus the project managers that they have managing the projects, whether it's their own internal project managers or we bring them in a fractional basis out of our organization in. And that's where we assess about what are you doing, how have you been doing it? How have you been using project management techniques. So it's that setting the baseline for the project. And we call that a seatbelt session for our folks that are coming in that we don't know or we're working with them within the company. We call that our project management knowledge gap assessment. And that's where we assess and eventually we are gonna be getting that up on projects practice.com. We're gonna do like a mini version of it for people to try out themselves. And this is where we assess people's aptitude for project management. And I like the word aptitude because just like I have curly blonde hair. That's how we came into this world. And I believe that's how project managers come into this world is that we come in with certain characteristics that make us who we are. I think this is the thing that when you look at these types of assessments, and in fact our project management institute, our governing body does versions of this assessment when they test us.

Galen Low:

Ah, yeah.

Barbara Kephart:

That's why sometimes people pass right away because it logically makes sense to them, and then other people might struggle. And I'm not saying that's the only reason, there's other reasons involved, but the things I know before, I don't know about you, but when I took mine, they had just started switching it to more logic-based questions. Project managers are very logical, and this is something we have from the time we're very young and these are the traits that we carry and the ability to critically think, the ability to look ahead, the ability to be able to plan things in advance. Many people, they just have trouble for whatever reason it is, whether they're born that way, life circumstances have led them that way. They really can only think to the next task, and even that's a struggle. Which is not a good project management trait to have.

Galen Low:

Is it learnable though? We're talking about, being born with curly blonde hair and folks who are listening, who are going, oh, I'd love to be a project manager. I think I'd be great. Am I logical? Yeah. I don't know. I. I don't know if I'm logical. I guess maybe. Maybe I can't do this. Can some of these things be taught? Can I learn to have curly blonde hair?

Barbara Kephart:

I believe so. You can get a perm and you can dye it. Yes, I believe so. I'll say that with a little bit of a caveat because I believe, yes, you can learn it however we all know it. When those projects get big and messy and off the wall where you're like, oh my gosh. There are many people that I have seen that have done excellent up to that point. As soon as the chaos creeps in, they freeze for whatever reason. That's a whole different level of learning and some people may not be able to ever learn that because they prefer order. Another trade of project managers is we like things in order. So there's a two part on that is not only do we like to have things in order and we're very good at keeping things in order and we can be taught how to keep things in order. You hear the classic person who is a, a pack rat and then in time they are like, oh, I really like having my house organized now and I'm gonna start cleaning things up and it keeps order in their life. That said, we also have to be very flexible that when things get messy quick, we also have to have that ability. I'm not sure if that last ability is learnable.

Galen Low:

That's fair. That's actually interesting actually. I really love that framing though, because it's I do think a lot of folks, they're planning their career. They're like, yeah, on a fair weather day when things are going well, I could totally do that job. Whereas actually the right mindset might be like, could I do this job when everything is crashing around me? And that might be true of any job, not just project management, but it's like, what about a bad day? Could I handle a bad day when things are not going my way? Do I have the aptitude to manage that, whether that's stress management or staying organized and calm under pressure, or using assertiveness as a tool. Not necessarily making it the core part of your character, but you can pull it out when you need it. I like that framing of just like project management on a bad day. They're hard days.

Barbara Kephart:

I encourage people to think about that. When things go bad in your life, when you're having that bad day or that bad week or a bad year, really go back to that and say, how did I get through that and how well did I do it? Now, remember, it's going to get better the more bad years you have, meaning that you're gonna learn more and more techniques out of that. So the more bad days, the more bad months, the more bad years you're gonna get some learning out of that's going to help you handle more. So that's where maybe I'll go back on what I just said, that it's not learnable. Maybe it is depending on how much bad you've had, right? Yes. I know myself, I like to say I grew up in a chaotic Irish Italian family and I had to learn how to manage them, and I found that was actually doable for me. I also went into the healthcare space where I was having to be on call in the middle of the night. And so I would be woken up just like any on-call professional and have to function very quickly in an emergency situation with patients in the emergency room. And so those skills helped me that when a project goes sideways, quickly, to be able to go oh, and I even have some techniques that I've brought from my healthcare experience that I now use with my businesses and companies and folks that I train to say, okay, this is how we're gonna start sorting through it. So I am gonna go back on what I said, that it's not learnable or perhaps it's not learnable and say, yes, it's learnable if you're willing to learn it.

Galen Low:

Fair. And also, I think the thing that really resonated with me earlier is you said like aptitude, maybe it is core in some way. There's certain things that you may be born with, but it's a balance and almost like adjusting that balance of the aptitudes or the qualities or the traits that you have to fit into that puzzle piece of, yes, my project's going sideways, or, yes, there's chaos around me. I think that's the thing that unlocks it, and then paying attention to it. Learning how to use that aptitude, whatever it may be. It's not cookie cutter, but how can you find that balance of your traits? To tackle this problem and then get better and better at it. And I think that's what I was taking from what you were saying is like the learning bit is not learning to change your stripes, right? As a zebra. The learning bit is to understand what that balance of your traits is to help you succeed at this role. And then leaning into that and going, okay, how can I get more comfortable with this? How can I refine and optimize my approach to these things? Which is to say that like I'm not someone who naturally, like I'm not the birthday party planner, do not let me plan a birthday. I am not that person on paper. I'm actually quite a, I'd probably be a very bad project manager, but there is something that honestly took a lot of work, was not natural. Took a lot of work to get into and yeah, I do think that framing is useful. It's not necessarily, no, you can't be a project manager. You don't have these things, but it might be more work for some than others.

Barbara Kephart:

I really like that. I love the way you explain that because it's the reframing of it and the ones that I find that their longevity within the field is questionable are the ones that when things get messy, they literally, and no joke, hide behind their computer screen. They sit in meetings and it seems like their laptop lid is being covered over their head because their head is so far down, and instead, this is when our head needs to be up. And it's okay to do that once or twice maybe. However, we really need to see that growth, that learning, that expansion of, okay, we've had this project going. Things are going really well. Something could go wrong. Remember whole other discussion. We talk about risk management creating, this is a whole part. Could, we could turn the whole podcast into risk around this one particular. Topic, but identifying what could potentially happen, being prepared for it, and if and when it happens, being ready for it, which means getting away from your computer and starting to talk to those people, to your stakeholders, figuring out what's going on, which can be very uncomfortable for some people. That communication, get 'em getting right up in front of people saying What happened? Those are all the things. So yes, there's a learning and evolving that happens as you're going through this process of understanding how projects work with a whole bunch of very complex people.

Galen Low:

You know what's really interesting? Building on that, but actually coming back to something you said earlier, which is like some of the best quote unquote training you had for project management was like your family or working in medicine and like being in an OR, or like being someone who's on call and having the resilience to deal with stressful situations and then going back further where you're like folks who don't have quote unquote project management experience. There's a way to frame some of these things that we're talking about. We are low key, giving a masterclass on how to frame your value and understand how you'll drive value as a project manager, if that's something you're interested in. Whether or not you've had that title before, whether or not you have a PMP, whether or not you've been doing project work even there are these sort of traits and qualities that are very valuable in the project manager role that you can acquire and probably already have even if you haven't been a project manager before.

Barbara Kephart:

In drawing on those experiences, you and I talked to somebody on our, which I will be talking about I'm sure PM Coffee spot, where he was mentioning his family upbringing caused him to. Really and the issues that he dealt with within his family. We've also talked to others that have had very difficult journeys moving countries, and many of the international students I teach you have a project just getting here into this classroom. You went through an entire process to leave your country. That's whole, a whole piece in itself. But also enrolling in a program in a different country and in particular project management program like that is a project. Those pieces you can draw on when you're talking with people about you being very effective at this role because you've overcome adversity. And that's what we do in projects is we overcome a lot of obstacles and hurdles that get in our way, and that's what makes us good at what we do.

Galen Low:

I'm totally that guy as well. As a hiring manager, I'm like, I'm trying to figure out what that candidate. Looks like when they're having that bad day with a tough day, when things are going wrong and how they deal with a problem. And we're trained to go in into an interview and be like, oh, my projects are perfect. Yeah. On scope, on time, on budget. Yeah. That's me. And you're like no. That might have been the outcome. Tell me how you navigated the adversity. And I think anyone who has a story about solving a problem under stress can tell a really good story in an interview for a project manager role. You mentioned PM Coffee Spot. I wanna dive in there and maybe just zoom out a little because at some point last year you came to me with an idea to set up a community for new and aspiring project managers. Coming from any industry and any background, we ended up calling it the PM Coffee Spot. Can you tell us what the PM Coffee Spot is and what it means for you, and why is it so important for you to invest your time and energy into?

Barbara Kephart:

And I came to you as part of the digital project manager because DPM is so incredibly beautifully focused on the digital PMs. Yet I work with people across all industries, and I knew that whether you're a digital project manager or a healthcare project manager, a technical project manager, you know any of those, there's still the same need where you have questions to ask and you're not really sure where to ask them. You need some resources that you know are not only easy to read, but are reliable because there's so much out there that. When I search something or I ChatGPT it, I'm like, eh, it's not quite right. But because I've been doing it a while I know that we also, the common thing that I get from folks is they want a place to network and they wanna place the network that's safe outside of the social medias that are out there right now that. They're not really sure where their information goes. They don't want their employer finding it. And then of course, all of those fits into those who are either just starting out or interested in getting a career in project management. And so the concept of a forum, which is something that's been reentered back into our world. And yeah, like early days of project, early days, the internet forums were so popular and they reentered back in. And so creating a forum that's a safe place, it's someplace that they can explore. I think that was just really fitting and. I had a version of this when I first started, specifically in project management, not necessarily as a healthcare provider, but I had it in the form of a couple mentors. I could talk with them, I could discuss with them. We kinda had our own little mini forum and I thought we're global now. This was back in person days where you actually had to debate the office every single day. And so I wanted to build to create a place that people felt safe, that they could share their information and have those mentors available. So we've created something. Over time, it's evolving. Still speaking, evolution seems to be the term of the topic of this podcast right now. It's evolving over time, but we are bringing a place where it's a whole bunch of mentors that you and I are finding. It's not just you or I, we're finding all these various mentors from all different levels of experience, some just early stages themselves, but they've really accomplished something, others really late stage and we're building a community around that. And I think that's the key in this is it's a, I think we use the word landing place, the safe landing place for people to go and just say, I wanna ask this dumb question. And I think this is a place I can ask that dumb question. Yes. It's, I asked a lot of dumb questions when I first started do, and actually this is so something we do.

Galen Low:

That's a skill. I love what you're saying about that in terms of conversations with mentors and the world's a big place now. And yes, honestly, I've been really impressed with generative ai. I think, ChatGPT, perplexity, Gemini, you name it, all of those things are quite incredible tools in terms of gathering knowledge. And yet when you said that, I was like, yeah, it's something that's not quite the same as having a mentor to talk to. At least for me it's not, I know there might be some folks who are like, no, whatever. I put it on chat mode. It sits next to me all day. I chat to it all day. It is my mentor. It knows everything on the internet, but sometimes I just wanna know something that's not on the internet, but you were talking about stories, about people's upbringing and like big moves, the things that kind of shaped us as humans and has influenced or provided some input into how we do our jobs. It doesn't strike me as like LLM-able, if that makes sense. Do you know what I mean? It's tell me a story of how Barb got off one night on call as a healthcare practitioner and made it work with a nuclear medicine background. It's I don't think they'll know that story. Maybe if he it somewhere, I think,

Barbara Kephart:

yeah, I think it'll find it and it'll try and extract some those pieces. But the person's gonna have another question because they're gonna read it and they're gonna be like what did you do around this? And how did you, especially in nuclear medicine in particular, many patients have very chronic or very serious diagnoses, right? Cancer, heart disease. So they're scared. And so when you're trying to get information out of a stakeholder, and especially a very sick and scared stakeholder, none of these tools are going to help you get that because they're not human and. Back to a group of mentors. First of all, you can never have enough of them. And that's what I know we're trying to do with the PM Coffee Spot. And these mentors, we can't talk in these tools yet. Maybe in the future let's give us another, maybe they will be able to create versions of us. But for right now, the human experience that people need to get themselves through the next step of a project is still with a human. And those tools, they do have a tendency to point, and the advantage to them, as I find is they are sending leaders more and more to being like, maybe we need to manage this as a project. Dah. We've known that for a long time, that we need to use project management techniques. So a lot of the answers they're giving, and that's good because that is people like us who are feeding them that information. So I think that's really good, which will help increase our field and, improve our field with the recognition that we need. But back to whether that tool can give you that answer of what did you do in the middle of the night when you couldn't get information out of a very sick patient for whatever reason, or what did you do? When you were about to do a go live on a Monday

morning at 7:

00 AM and you found out Sunday night that your major stakeholder was unreachable, one of your key stakeholders was unreachable. I don't know if AI yet or any of those tools, a Google search is going to give you that answer. They're gonna give you generic answers, but a real life person is gonna say, oh yeah when that happened to me, and then if I don't know, if it hasn't happened to me, I'm gonna go to my other mentors or my community and say, Hey, anybody had this situation? We have someone needs it. It's even gonna be quicker than a search, because someone's gonna say, yes, I got it.

Galen Low:

It comes back to something you were saying earlier too, where it's like I'm a firm believer that, especially in project management, there isn't usually one right answer. And I think everyone has their own style as a professional, not, not even just a project manager. Everyone has their own style as a professional, and sometimes, the art is to be able to synthesize your own truth from the information you're given. Not be given one answer and go, okay, that must be the answer. Off we go. And I think that's the beauty of community is that yeah, you're gonna get a couple different people respond in different ways and some people will agree and some people will disagree. And it's all about going, okay, that sounds like it'll work for me. That's something that I can try. I'm gonna change these three things.'cause like I'm not that person who's so bold and extroverted or whatever as that person is, but I'm gonna extract my truth from it and I'm going to let it inform what I'm going to do in my style. Not necessarily the one right answer. And that's like I had crafted this LinkedIn post and I never posted it, but it was like the I'm feeling lucky button on Google. I always hated it, not because, I'm sure it does great things for some searches, but when I'm looking for, I don't know, something I'm doing research on, I don't want the first pop ranking answer. I don't wanna just go there and be like, that must be the answer. I want multiple inputs so that I can make a decision for myself. And that's just how I'm wired. And I think coming back to what you're saying about like the learning isn't necessarily changing your stripes. And it's not necessarily all just technical skills, but it's almost like learning how to learn how to ask dumb questions, how to like ingest smart answers, sometimes dumb answers. You know what I mean? And parse that and make that your own. And I think as a project manager, it's such a great skill. Talk to a bunch of people. Figure out what actually matters and doesn't, where there's risk, where there's not risk, what's gonna have an impact and what's not gonna have an impact. Parsing all that information and then keeping the boat on course amidst choppy waters on bad days, on days when you can't get ahold of that key stakeholder. That actually is the skill.

Barbara Kephart:

It is. And then going back to what you just said, talk to trusted people, trusted mentors, trusted stakeholders. When you search, going back to the, I feel lucky that information is coming from either what Google identifies as the most accurate information, which is fine, but it's also coming from a pool of people that you don't know. And when it comes from a pool of people that you trust and if anybody has heard me speak before, I'm all about trust in projects. That's a huge topic for me because it helps us build the trust within our stakeholders and people rely on you, blah, blah, blah. Once again, another whole other podcast topic, however. When you work from a pool of trusted mentors and a trusted community, you feel better about that information. Being as accurate as you can to move forward to the next step may not always work. You may have to come back and say, oh, didn't work. Can we try another make? You're still coming from that. When you pull it off of a tool, it's great, but it's pulling off information that's out there in the world, which may not distill down tight enough for what you need, and you're not sure if this is trustable or not.

Galen Low:

I really like that. Just knowing the author of the information, I think is important. It's important for learning about project management or anything. It's also important in project management, like on a day-to-day basis or anything, any job.

Barbara Kephart:

And the mentors that, that I know that you and I talk with and work with, and when we create community around. They've not only been in the weeds, but we've lost sleepover projects. We've got ourselves back in the weeds sometimes. I like to say we managed our project into a dark closet and we can't find our way out, and we've got our team in there with us and we're like, ah, we don't know what to do. Those are the things you may not be able to find on the internet or in a ChatGPT tool or any of the tools that are out there. You may not be able to find that people are a group of people who have been really stuck, and I think sometimes we search because we're stuck. Sometimes we might be searching in the wrong places, and instead we might need to draw from a community or a person or a group of people.

Galen Low:

Actually, maybe we can take it there and put you on the spot. If you're somebody who's learning about project management, you're trying to pivot in, how do you know if you can trust somebody? What are some of the things you should be looking for that help build trust or assess trust?

Barbara Kephart:

I think the first one is that they wanna have a conversation with you. So many will just point you to something. They'll point you to a thing that they've created, or they'll point you to an article online, or they'll point you to a certification. And if they're willing to have a conversation to understand where you are and where you're going. Because I firmly believe that as many people, as I say, yes, you're a good project matter. Yes, you should pursue this. Yes, you're doing a good job. I also say, equally, no, actually I don't think this is a good field for you. And I think I'm helping them by doing that because I would hate for them to get a year or so in, 'cause usually I'm finding on average it's about a year or two in and they're like, Hey, this is too much. I shouldn't have ever done this. I should be going into someplace else. I really like sales instead. Or, I really like only marketing instead. And I think that having that person also being really honest, saying, and I've had to do this where I've had people reach out to me and I'm like, just not sure. And it's not even the results of, let's say, an assessment that I do with them. Just having that conversation with them saying, I'm not sure if this may be the field fit. Go ahead and try, but keep an eye on other fields as well, or things that may have some of this overlapping.'cause remember we said earlier, many positions, many roles have project management components, but you're not. Responsible for some monstrosity of a project that you now have to lead. And so making sure that the people that you're talking to are willing to have a conversation with you, that there's some give and take, meaning that I'm gonna give you this information and I'd like you to work on this and come back to me with the result. So there's some sort of a conversation back and forth. As well as once you find people to talk to, make sure that it works for you. You're not only talking to them, but you might be engaging in some of the material that they've put out there. Listening to a podcast like this too. I find that there's many people that I listen to, whether it's in the project management field or even in my business side of things that I talk to, that I develop a relationship with them by listening to them and knowing that they're there for me. That they're not just spitting information out me and expecting me to absorb it and move on to the next person, that they really care about my journey and they really wanna see me succeed.

Galen Low:

I like that. I was, I've been watching too many videos about touring tests and are you a human? And I like the sort of notion of a, are you a trustworthy human? Let's dialogue. And that dialogue is what's gonna help me build that trust. And, maybe dialogue in certain ways too. I know there's folks on LinkedIn that I follow that I've never had a conversation with, I can see them the way they interact with folks or their openness to different ideas. I know they're not just operating in this narrow hallway and they can't go left or right. They only know, I only know these words about project management and it's in this article right here and ask me anything else. And I don't know. But that willingness to be like, Hey, let's talk. Or there may be different perspectives, or I might tell you something that you won't wanna hear, but it's the brutal truth that you need to hear are some of those things where you're like, aha, okay. All right. This isn't just, yes, you're gonna be a great project manager by my book, but it's maybe you won't be, have you considered this and let's chat. I really like that. For folks who are listening who like want to pivot into project management, they're like considering maybe they're not early in their career either. Maybe they're mid career heck late career, and they're like, you know what? Project management sounds something that. Really interesting about, it's always been appealing to me. What's the first step that someone should take if they want to pivot into project management?

Barbara Kephart:

Yeah, and I feel like a lot of people are trying to pivot into project management right now because the statistics show, I just read an article actually in the fall that said, by 2030, the global economy is going to need 25 million new project professionals. That was a big number. I don't know where they got their number. I didn't dive too much into where they got that from, although it feels right because we have had this big tech boom, right? Not only in the more recent past, but just over this past year with all of these machine learning, all of these tools that are out there, and that's making from more and more complex projects. And so the one thing I would tell people is that don't just go into it because you're like, oh, there's jobs that are gonna be available. Really do your research. Decide if this is really what you're gonna do. Are you going to be a dedicated project manager, is what I like to call them. Or you're gonna be somebody who stays in your same field but is going to try and manage more projects as part of your role that you're doing. Or you're going to be somebody who is going to explore the project management. Maybe not go all in right away, but going, so don't just jump in because you think there's gonna be all these opportunities and you know the money's good and whatever it might be. Really decide if this is what aspect of project management, what area of project management wanna go into all in. Many of us, that's what we like doing. But there might be that partially in or doing it as part of your main job role, taking on those projects within a company saying, Hey, by the way, this is a real project I don't mind doing as part of my day job, but this is a project I wanna achieve as a project. So let's say 20% of my time. A day is going to be managing this project, so assess that. I know when I left healthcare, I went in and I was an analyst for 50% of the day. I was a systems analyst, and the other 50% of the day I was managing projects. And I had to really understand when I was in analyst mode and when I was in PM mode. So making sure that they're really looking as you're pivoting and really assessing all of it because it's not for everyone. The people though that Excel as being, let's go with the dedicated project manager. Those are the ones that love the details. We are just the ones that love those details. We love scheduling. We love tight timelines. We love putting things together and getting those dependencies. And we also love planning 10 steps ahead. Now, that's an easy one. Those ones, if you know that when you're planning just a trip to the grocery store and you're thinking of 10 steps ahead of all the things that you're gonna drive by as you're going to the grocery store. Oh, I can do that errand. I can get that errand, and then I have to be back in time for this because this is gonna be happening back home. Those are also, that's a trait, so paying attention to that. Also, the ability to think critically, which once again could be a whole other podcast topic, is how to think critically. Also, the troubleshooter, those are the ones that when something goes bad, those are, lemme see if we can figure this out. Whether it's tech or not, or something's broken. You know how you even figure it out. And then more and more relevant nowadays, are you digitally literate? Even if you're managing projects, a construction project, for example, and that's your background. You're gonna have to be digitally literate nowadays. So paying attention to those. And then also the ability to want to work through bigger projects, bigger problems, more complex problems, and knowing that is a trait for the dedicated project manager. And if those are things that are not for you. Then you might wanna think of kind of those other two buckets, which is, or three buckets I should say. One of which this isn't your field. The other two is maybe I manage 20% of my time is managing projects, or I explore it. So those are the tips that I would give. If you know you're in the, yes, this is it, this is the direction. I'm like, I know I can handle bigger and bigger projects, then that fits into the dedicated project manager.

Galen Low:

I like that knowing what options are available. When you like come outta high school or at least my, my, when I was coming outta high school, you know there's four jobs you can do, he had like career personal planning and it's okay, maybe there's 18 jobs that you can do. And then you get out into the world and you're like, oh my gosh, there's like hundreds of job titles that no one ever told me about. And when I read the descriptions, I'm like, actually, this uses like a lot of what I can do and maybe some things that I can't, but I didn't know it was a possibility. Then for the like areas where you're like, yeah, okay, I kind of plan ahead, but I could probably get better at it. How can someone like level themselves up to a point where they feel comfortable pursuing project management roles as a dedicated project manager? How can they lift themselves up, level up, skill up if they don't feel like they're digital, like digitally savvy, if they don't feel like they are great planners, if they don't think that they are great at communicating, where do they go from there?

Barbara Kephart:

Learn. This is where you go in and you just learn as much as you can. Some of it might be attending webinars or anything that's out there about how to get better at it. Many of the tools that are open there, many of the project management tools offer great webinars, in my opinion, on specific generic things. Yeah, of course. They're always pushing their own tool. But they have great webinars out there. Digital Project Manager, for example. You have excellent learnings and that you can take out there. You have a certificated program. That's excellent. I've gone through it, companies like myself, where we're starting to get into that e-learning space and starting to do smaller courses and smaller little offerings to forgive people. And then the other one that I always push is also the informational interviews. I have this in our Get a PM job offering on projects practice.com. It's gonna be released soon where an informational interview I had huge, and I still do them actually. When I'm looking at an area that I've never managed, so for instance, I've never managed environmental or climate action projects. I've done them as volunteers, but I've never actually worked for a company, and that's an area I'm like, this would be really cool. I'm starting to have informational interviews, which are very short, 15 to 20 minutes long where you sit down with someone and say, Hey, can I ask you how this works? How do you manage projects in this area? They may be a project manager or not. They may be a subject matter expert. It's me. How does this work? And with an informational interview, you have to be very cognizant of their time because you know you're asking them for free advice, have questions in advance, preferably only about three or four, and get information from them. Find out how this works, what makes it tick, and then that'll give you information of, is this an area of project management I wanna do, or in fact, is this even a type of project that I even wanna manage because this may not be an area that fits for me. Talking with people, seeing we're being, trying informational interviews, seeing the resources out there. Some are free, some of you do have to pay for. Some of them are subscriptions, some of them are. You do a paper offer, but really assess if you're a good project manager. You could even spreadsheet it, write it all down and start getting information. But be cautious. You may overwhelm yourself. You may have so much information coming at you that you may be like, I don't know what to search through. I'm not sure exactly what I've, so being cautious of first finding, you mentioned it earlier, that authentic source that you feel like you resonate with. You mentioned there's some that you listen to that you really can resonate with and starting with them and then branching out from there.

Galen Low:

That get a PM job of course. Sounds super interesting. I will definitely link it in the show notes. I know it's not available quite yet, but I'll make sure that folks can learn about it after they listen.

Barbara Kephart:

Great, thanks.

Galen Low:

I had this big old question about the future of project management, but that one feels like it might be its own podcast, so maybe I thought maybe we, let's leave it there.

Barbara Kephart:

I think it might be its own, because actually I think people are feeling very frustrated right now, and this is, March of 20, 25, people are feeling very frustrated with everything going on and like project managers even need to be around. And I think it might be its own topic. Where you could even draw from different folks to hear what they think the future is because there's so much that's moving right now. I personally feel it's more and more relevant as ever before. In fact, I think it's the most relevant it's probably ever been. However we have to understand. There's variations in that. And does that mean, like I said earlier, it may not be the title of Project manager?

Galen Low:

Okay. Yeah, that's juicy and I think we've touched on it throughout this conversation and I definitely would love to have you back to talk about, yeah, what project manager roles or project management roles look like in the future. Folks listening, going won't there just be AI project managers, like starting next year? We can dive into all of that. I think the panel idea is fantastic.

Barbara Kephart:

Yeah, I think it'd be great because we're also seeing, the other thing, and just to finish on that thought, is that we're also seeing fields that have been historically non PME, so last project oriented industries who are now starting to embrace project management might be on a smaller scale than let's say the IT field or those types of fields. However, that's the other thing we're seeing, and so where do we fit in that to be determined.

Galen Low:

Interesting. Interesting. We will tackle that next time. Barb, thank you so much for spending the time with me today. I always have lots of fun chatting with you.

Barbara Kephart:

Thanks for having me. That was great.

Galen Low:

Alright folks, there you have it. As always, if you'd like to join the conversation with over a thousand like-minded project management champions, come join our collective! Head over to thedpm.com/membership to learn more. And if you like what you heard today, please subscribe and stay in touch on thedigitalprojectmanager.com. Until next time, thanks for listening.