With A Little Help From My Friends

Driving around this long weekend, taking in the beautiful weather, and enjoying a much needed rest from work, Joe Cocker's cover of The Beatles hit, "With A Little Help From My Friends" comes on the radio, and while my first thought was of the television show "The Wonder Years", my second thought was , I wonder if they were thinking about Project Management when they wrote this song. Let me explain...

Lately I've been finding work to be extremely stressful, with high client demands, short timelines, and simply not enough time in the day to accomplish all the tasks at hand. And while this all sounds like a typical day in the life of a Project Manager, lately, I've been finding it particularly difficult to get through while continuing to maintain some level of sanity. In fact, these past couple of weeks, the stress has gotten so great, that I've been questioned by friends, as to why I don't simply quit, to which I look at them with a smile and simply say "because of my coworkers".

I've worked in many different types of positions, industries, places... all of them with a great group of people, but never have I worked somewhere with such a strong support group as the one I feel in my current company, which has led me to discover a key component of Project Management, your support group. While knowledge and experience are certainly important factors in being a good Project Manager, I feel that a solid support team is that third piece, the one that makes you a great Project Manager. As mentioned earlier, Project Management, in it's very nature is an extremely stressful job, one filled with irritable clients, tight deadlines, and large deliverables (sounds great, I know!), which is why finding a group of people that support you and truly care for you, is so important. Having a team of people ready to stay a little later to fix up a graphic or tweak a database, to take a final look at a project before it goes to the client, or simply to act as a sounding board when you just need a break, is what changes the life expectancy of a Project Manager from 1 year to 5 or 10 years.

If I could give one piece of advice to any new Project Managers out there, it would be to choose your environment carefully, as it has the ability to make the next couple of years in your career either a curse or a blessing. And as I approach my 2-year anniversary at my current company (this Friday!), I've realized how important the people around you can be. So to all of you out there reading this blog....

THANK YOU!