#27 - Altitudes of Project Management (Spoiler alert: it's not the same as business management)
A framework to think about levels of project management, and a tactic to help you jump between altitudes like the best executives and founders do.
This post is particularly for early-to-mid career professionals who are starting to work on increasingly complex projects that connect with other complex projects within organizations.
Back in 2013…
A senior colleague of mine was waxing poetic about how he had achieved a top rating at a happy hour. As he waved his hands around, spilling his Guinness on my new shoes, he made a proclamation that has stuck with me to this day, not because it was wrong but because it was missing valuable elements:
“Focus on getting tasks done, and you’ll get the promotions you want.”
At the time, I nodded my head along, because hey: it made sense. If I just accomplish task after task, and do them well then my bosses will be happy, and I’ll get a good rating, and eventually I’ll get promoted.
Nearly a decade later, I have a way of thinking about task management that helps me to almost never lose sight of the fact that tasks are just outputs, and outputs do not equal outcomes… And businesses are focused on outcomes. Task completion, then, should ideally be in support of and with appreciation for actual outcomes for the team/business.
As an early-to-mid career professional, one of the single most common pieces of feedback you might get may sound like: “See the bigger picture” or “look left to right,” and it’s because executives usually are thinking at a higher level: certainly focused on execution details, but also appreciating broader business dynamics.
Alright, enough preamble, here’s the meat.
This is how I think about the different altitudes of project management:
Level I: Task Management (getting specific, granular tasks done, what most people at a company are thinking about. Example: send X e-mail, draft Y document)
Level II: Project Management (managing many tasks to complete a project, what most project managers are thinking about. Example: meet with three people responsible for a group of tasks to stay on track)
Level III: Program & Product Management (managing a collection of projects to achieve some functional outcome, what mid-level managers often think about. Example: running an IT transformation program that has projects within it focused on customer data systems, finance systems, and collaboration tools for teams out in the field supporting customers). Example 2: managing a product that sits within a business’s offering portfolio (“offerings”)
Level IV: Business Management (managing a business to results that have been promised to a board of directors or other principal owners, what executives are usually thinking about. Example: improving margins by 5% YoY by implementing and managing a collection of programs focused on things like an IT Transformation program (see the connection?), a Pricing program, and a Talent Effectiveness program).
How this changes throughout your career
When you’re just starting out in your career, you’re (rightfully so) probably focused on task management, because it’s likely that your boss is also focused on task management or maybe project management.
As you progress through your career and get promoted, you’ll suddenly be responsible for projects, and you’ll now have to manage others who drive tasks…But you’ll also be responsible for understanding the broader programs that the business is pursuing.
And when you’re an executive, responsible for top-level business results (like revenue and cost management), you’ll have to architect strategic plans that usually have Programs, and projects within those programs. You’ll be responsible for making sure all of the pieces fit together, and you’ll be responsible for establishing a culture that can execute all of these programs.
But to be next-level effective at what you do, you need to be able to jump between these different levels. And the best founders and executives I work with, are very good at changing altitudes.
One way to practice doing this is to actually use the above levels as a way to communicate. For example, when you speak literally call out the level you’re thinking at, “From an overall business perspective” “From an Pricing program-level perspective…” to communicate to others where you’re sitting. It’s also helpful to do this, because it helps others around you follow your train of thought.
An example from the world of commercial strategy
To wrap this up, here’s another example of how to apply this, from a Program I worked on years ago, focused on commercial operations:
Commercial Strategy Example:
Task (Level I): Collect data on recent purchasing behavior from top customers
Project (Level II): Conduct project analyzing purchasing behavior for all customers to understand areas to improve the customer buying experience
Program (Level III): Manage a portfolio of projects focused on growing revenue from existing customers. Projects include: (1) purchasing behavior analysis, (2) new customer experience design, (3) new customer experience implementation, (4) raw material cost streamlining project. All of these projects come together to drive results that impact the overall business in a material way
Business (Level IV): Managing a collection of programs that drive business results. This could mean driving several programs like the one I outlined in Level III, and also being accountable for their efficacy to, for example, a board of directors that is expecting certain company-level results from a management team. Management teams typically are focused on Levels 4 (primarily) and 3 (secondarily)
To close, as you think about your career, and especially as you want to take on more responsibility, you must understand the differences in altitude here. The skillset required at each level is a bit different than the others, and a “rookie mistake” of new managers of programs is that they get too mired in the details of tasks (details matter; you should care about them, but you have to create space for the bigger picture thinking too…more level IV thinking, where you appreciate how many different teams and programs can and maybe should fit together).