5 skills CEOs and project managers have in common
Believe it or not, project managers share many of the same skill sets as CEOs. It’s just a difference of scale: CEOs manage companies and project managers manage the projects that generate more revenue for companies. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that project managers are CEOs in training, since their day-to-day responsibilities are a microcosm of what to expect in the C-suite. Are you a project manager with CEO aspirations? Here are five skills project managers and CEOs have in common.
Listening
As a project manager, you have to be extremely good at listening. Because your success depends on the members of your team completing tasks on time and on budget, your purpose in all of this is to lead, since you’re not doing any of the work directly. Being able to actively listen and thoroughly understand challenges is a vital skill for project managers to have and continuously develop. If you don’t understand the subtleties of why things aren’t working, they’re hard to fix. When you’re a CEO, it’s no different because you’re collecting data from every facet of your company to make decisions. Being able to actively listen is vital here as well, because it not only makes you better informed, it motivates the people on your team to be the best they can be.
As former CEO of AmGen, Kevin Sharer once said in an interview with McKinsey Quarterly:
“As you become a senior leader, it’s a lot less about convincing people and more about benefiting from complex information and getting the best out of the people you work with. Listening for comprehension helps you get that information, of course, but it’s more than that: it’s also the greatest sign of respect you can give someone.”
People like to feel they’re being heard and when you’re really engaged and proactively trying to understand their challenges, it elevates their spirits and contributes to a healthy company culture.
Prioritization
When you’re a project manager, you look at things from a higher level. You’re responsible for every facet of the project and it’s not always obvious what’s most important at any given time. Individual contributors solely worry about their specific scope, whether that’s completing design work, building something or doing calculations. Project management forces you out of siloed thinking to see the bigger picture and make decisions based on what’s best for the project as a whole, rather than one piece of the pie. This helps immensely with learning how to prioritize with the big picture in mind, a critical skill in the C-suite.
As a CEO, you’re constantly bombarded with other people's problems, but not all of them have the same level of urgency.
This idea is summed up in the words of Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg:
“The question I ask myself like almost every day is, ‘Am I doing the most important thing I could be doing?’ Unless I feel like I’m working on the most important problem that I can help with, then I’m not going to feel good about how I’m spending my time. And that’s what this company is.”
Being able to prioritize is crucial so that you’re able to address what’s most important first for the greater good of the company. Project managers exercise this skill every day.
Goal setting
Project managers are experts at setting goals and working backwards to figure out the steps needed to achieve them. Why? You’re doing scheduling exercises daily to set milestones as well as using tools to determine the probability of your project’s success. The second part is important because it helps you calculate realistic stretch goals for your team, which is helpful for CEOs as well.There’s a saying, “What gets measured gets improved,” and having a grasp on the science of goal setting gives CEOs a vision and platform for what they’re working towards. If you don’t have a realistic goal that’s clearly communicated to everyone, your company will inevitably fall short. The tendency for most people is to gravitate towards mediocrity unless they are pushed to expand beyond what they thought they could do. Setting realistic goals and sharing what they are with members of your organization keeps morale high and instills a sense of purpose in everyone.
Communicating with Stakeholders
As a project manager, you’re in the business of building sound relationships with different tiers of people, from the members of your team to the specialists to the stakeholders above you. Relationships are key to getting your project done on time and on budget, but learning how to communicate with high-level stakeholders is another valuable skill project managers have in common with CEOs.
When you’re a senior level project manager with multiple projects, for example, you’ll have board members for each project. Similar to an executive board, you’ll need to seek their approval as they ask: “Why should we fund the project for the next phase?” Even though they're not at the CEO level, project managers are getting asked the same type of questions by the same type of people CEOs answer to, in a boardroom-like atmosphere.
The key difference is that CEOs communicate the progress of the entire company to investors rather than the progress of an individual project. Both project managers and CEOs are people-focused positions and relationships are their primary form of currency.
Risk management
Project managers are risk experts. On a weekly to a monthly basis, you’re going to be analyzing all of your risks and thinking about what could derail your project.
If a project takes two years to complete, for instance, the world could look a lot different. Could the markets be more expensive to get your goods? Could hurricanes or natural disasters impact the success of your project? The answer to these questions is a resounding yes. The delicate balance of project management is to figure out how much these types of risks could impact the economics of a project. Do I add in the cost of a remote parallel manufacturing site to blunt any risk of a hurricane hitting my main operations? Or am I okay with the chance that a hurricane doesn’t hit this year? These are very tough calls to make, but the science of project management and risk management help you visualize potential outcomes and make the most informed decisions.
Like project managers, CEOs need to excel at managing risk and seeing the ripple effects of their decisions — but on the company as a whole. They have to endorse risks in quarterly reports, be very transparent with shareholders, know when to take action against certain risks and when to not.
Project managers with CEO aspirations have an opportunity to fine-tune the above C-suite skills every day on the job. Are there any that I’ve missed? Comment with your thoughts below or @theomarproject on Twitter.