When I began working at a major global business services firm, I soon was given project management responsibility for large, complex projects.
Significant money was involved.
Multiple resources reported up to me that included full time employees, contractors, vendors, and specialists off-shore. Senior executives were watching and needed to be kept informed and happy. Colleagues across the organization ran the gamut from supportive and excited, to jealous and untrustworthy.
There were deadlines.
I surprised myself how quickly and easily I became very good at managing these large projects, since I had never trained as a project manager. There were those around me who had earned PMP (Project Management Professional) certification from the Project Management Institute, but I had to secretly look up what a PMP was.
At first I was confused – was I supposed to think being a project manager was some sort of innate ability? No, that was ridiculous. So where did the skill set come from?
I just needed to step back and think about it to realize that the skills I needed for project management I had learned during my years as a filmmaker. The two mapped exceptionally well, actually, which is why I was able to recognize what was going on in any given situation.
It wasn’t magic or talent, it was years of practice in a skill set that I was able to lift, nearly intact, from one field and place into another field.
I did go on to take more formal training in project management, and even contributed learning modules when the company made moves to standardize project management training.
But the foundational understanding of the complexities of managing projects I learned during my years working with film crews in New York, Pittsburgh, and San Francisco.
