Since merging the Project Management and Client Services teams, there have been questions about how we're differentiating the Account Director, Account Manages, and Project Manager roles.
While I have ideas of how these roles can function, I worried that swooping in with a solution would be disruptive, and I may not be solving the real issues.
I've been very forward about my perspective with the team. I wasn't sure exactly what steps to take, but I felt that focusing on projects first was the right place to start. In essence, rather than making a team-wide change that impacts every project, I aimed to find success on every project, identify the common themes, and then crystalize a team-wide structure.
After several one-on-one discussions with the team, I decided to start facilitating 30-minute workshops to review roles and responsibilities with the Account Leads and PMs on their projects, one at a time. The first two workshops took place last week.
In the workshop, I started by creating a column for each role in FigJam. In the first session, I asked: In one or two sentences, describe what your main value-add is on this project? The answer proved difficult, so we moved on. As we listed each person's desired activities, I invited them to forget what they knew and share how they'd ideally like to be involved. Within 15 minutes, we had a solid list, uncovering opportunities for each person to collaborate in new ways.
At the end, I returned to my earlier question, and now, the answer came more naturally. Together, we synthesized each role in one sentence. I thought this piece would be a good way to give each person a clean statement to lean on for clarity if anything out of the ordinary popped up down the line.
I'm only two sessions in, but the feedback has been positive. One of the attendees even asked to set up a workshop for another project. I'm excited to continue these sessions with Kate, our Director of Client Services, for another couple of weeks before locking in a clear structure for the team.
This post originally appeared in Edition No. 083 of my newsletter. Subscribe here.
Monday, April 11, 2022
