Problem Context: Contracting company’s work bandwidth was maximized to the point of having to turn down new 9-figure clients, so an emergent effort to bring on new Project Managers (PMs) – as well promote existing Assistant Project Managers (APMs) – was underway in order to match supply with demand. I was tasked with creating two parallel curriculums, one for new PMs and another modified one for APMs who were already familiar with many company policies, practices, SOPs, etc. The unique challenge here was that I lacked formal managerial experience.
Solution: I proactively networked interdepartmentally across the company to identify multiple SMEs, who simultaneously were stakeholders and some wanted the manager training to include specific learning goals that would benefit the stakeholder and/or their particular department. This was only possible via extremely thorough needs analyses and collaboration. For example, the manager training was originally intended to be broken into typical manager soft skills, and hard skills relevant to the unique combination of internal systems and processes. An HRBP stakeholder brought up a common issue with managers that keeps HRBPs unnecessarily busy, relating to confusion around the time-off system. Training on this, leading to the inclusion of a simple one-minute instructional video, was subsequently incorporated into the curriculum which had extended effects of creating new SOPs and quick-reference guides. This small inclusion alone saved both managers and HRBPs an enormous amount of collective aggregate time.
Result: The manager curriculum was instrumental in helping rapidly onboard new managers, reducing ramp-up time by approximately 60% (an exact figure was deemed impossible given myriad internal and external variables). This was not the end of the project though; over time and with continuous feedback, this training underwent several iterations and became an “organic/living training” of sorts, shifting and re-molding based on emerging business needs and new considerations. To this day, the manager curriculum stands as the most updated and utilized training across the company.
