The Secret Sauce of Project Management in Marketing with Jo Gruszka

Speaker 1: 0:23

Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of OpsCast brought to you by MarketingOpscom, powered by the MoPros. I'm your host, michael Hartman, joined today by my special co-host, naomi Liu. So this is. You're getting out of three of us in the last two episodes, because Mike was all by himself last time and now it's just the two of us, naomi.

Speaker 2: 0:41

Yeah, definitely Sunny day today and I'm on a podcast. Sunny day today and I'm on a podcast.

Speaker 1: 0:48

I'm today and I'm on a podcast. A sunny day today and I'm on a podcast, I'm inside. Sunny day in vancouver in the spring sounds good. It's cloudy here in dallas. Cloudy it's kind of in and out, so it's gonna be nice and humid. Um, well, let's get to it. So today, uh, this is kind of a near and dear topic for me. Project management is an often underrated and underappreciated skill within marketing and marketing operations. In my humble, joining us today to talk about the secret sauce and quote of project management in marketing is Joe Gruszka. Joe is currently a marketing operations consultant with Mojo Gruszka, her consulting company, and is a member of 1175 Collective. Prior to that, joe has held several project management, leadership and practitioner roles, primarily within the marketing domain. She is also involved with the Board of Directors for the Community Arts Foundation in Walnut Creek, california, where she is the treasurer. Hopefully I got all that right, jo. Thank you for joining us today.

Speaker 3: 1:41

Yes, you did. Yeah, Thank you so much. I'm very excited about being here. Thank you so much. I'm very excited about being here and you know it's quite some times and I started being a project manager and you're making a very strong point about you know the importance of project management and really I can speak about it for hours, so please stop.

Speaker 1: 2:04

I don't know that we have hours, but we will fill up this time. I am quite sure that that I that I know we'll do Well. So let's get started, though, first with. One of the things we like to do is to just hear a little bit about our guests' stories. If you will, and if you could maybe give us a little background of your career journey, how you got into project management, especially within marketing, because I do think it is not as common as it probably should be and then tell us about your consulting company. The name's Moe Jogruszka. It sounds like there's some sort of story there, so maybe fill in that as well.

Speaker 3: 2:41

Yes, yes, always stories, always stories. But let me start Well. When I first graduated, when I graduated from university, I my focus was merchandising and marketing, tracking, collection, development, and then I oversaw change management when the operational programs were implemented for the entire organization. And then, when I was at Rotterdam Fields, I was part of the marketing team, but truly I was tracking projects, producing photo shoots, producing video shoots, organized assets, making sure everything was in the right place and produced at the right time. So again was I really a marketing manager, and so all the roles, however they were called, allowed me to really work closely together with creative teams. And when I got the opportunity to join a digital agency, firewood Marketing, it was like a dream come true. So, basically, all the experience that I had in a marketer, merchandiser, assistant, whatever, however you call it I landed as a project manager within the agency, within the agency, and it made me realize that, um, pm, uh, it's such a pm, meaning project management is such an important role for the creative and marketing teams because it allows to glue it all together and work closely together with cross-functional partner and allow them to focus on their craft. So, for firewood marketing really opened the door for me to become that, really that blue for so many different teams marketing strategy operations, creative, you call it and fast forward.

Speaker 3: 4:44

Today, mojo Gruszka Consulting. It's basically helping organizations, small and large, to find efficiencies. You know, nowadays everything needs to happen super fast and everything needs to be very cheap. So how do you do it? And so Mojo Gruszka came from the idea of you know so mo, and then joe, my name. So when thinking about how this could all come together, mojo was just something that's stuck to my head. I'm also, uh, creative. I'm writing books for kids. I, um, I do design, I do logo Anything. It's all in the drawer right now, but I'm really creative and trying to express myself throughout as well. So when I was creating my own logo, I thought about the magic. I thought about all the awesome things and the unicorn that we are as project managers happening in, happening in the background, and Mojo was just like right on. So, uh, here I am.

Speaker 1: 5:57

It's interesting that you've got that Cause I I suspect most of our listeners might be reacting like I am, which is, I think it's unusual to at least it seems like it would be unusual to me to have someone who's strong at project management, which I don't think most people would think of as project managers, being quote, creative right, but you're also creative in I guess I'll call it the traditional sense writing and art, visual kind of stuff. Do you see that? Is that a dissonance for you too, or do you think it's like, do you see bits of those skills applying in both places?

Speaker 3: 6:32

It does and, to be honest with you, 90% of project managements that I work with, they have creative background and the reason why it's helpful is because we understand creative, we understand marketing and we speak the same language. So if you engage a project manager who works with I don't know IT or constructions, everything is very based on data, on spreadsheets, on anything numbers. If you present it to the creative or marketing lead or anyone working on a campaign, they'll be like I don't understand what it is. So we have to be very visual. So at some point I remember someone mentioned Joe, you're making spreadsheets beautiful and that's basically what it is. You know, you have to be very visual about communicating with the. Without them, without the project manager, creatives will not be able to really focus on their craft because they will have so many other admin elements they have to cover within a day in order to complete their work.

Speaker 1: 8:01

Sure, I think a lot of creatives are sorry.

Speaker 2: 8:04

Well, I was just saying I think a lot of, like, creatives are also, like, naturally born project managers, right, because a lot of them, at least the ones I know they're just really good at organizing and communicating. Project management can provide that structure or that backbone for those skills to really shine right. And a lot of creative people, they're really good at expressing their ideas, influencing people, you know, persuading them on, you know. This is why marketers, right, this is why you should buy this product, this is why you should do this right. So they're leaders by definition, I would say.

Speaker 2: 8:41

And I would say that, like, especially in marketing operations, I've found that people who really gravitate towards those types of roles tend to already be very good project managers, right, like, even in their home life. Like you don't really see project managers who live in a way that's, you know, a mess, for example, right, we tend to, we tend to all bond over the fact that we like to Marie Kondo things. Marie Kondo your tech stack, you know how? Have you organized your snack drawer? You know what I mean. It's just conversations like that.

Speaker 3: 9:14

Oh yeah.

Speaker 1: 9:17

That's, yeah, it's. It's funny. I think I would echo the same thing. I mean, now that I've thought about, think about that most of the creative teams I've worked with tended to have at least one, if not more than one, person who had and maybe it's like the design, like the, the like being the design, functional kind of part of being a designer, that that maybe brings it to bear. It's interesting. I hadn't thought about that until you brought it up.

Speaker 2: 9:43

I I was looking for something on my. I was looking for this article. I just Googled it on my phone. So it's an article from the Harvard Business Review. It says according to a study published in the Harvard Business Review, organizations that prioritize creativity and their project management strategies are more likely to experience success and achieve their goals. So you know it's written in the Harvard Business Review. It must be true, right.

Speaker 3: 10:07

Absolutely so. You know it's written in the Harvard Business Review. It must be true, right? So at age, uh wrote a really good article that there's not a lot of, uh, really good resources about project management related to creatives and marketing. But one of them stood up to me it's few years old, but um, they uh quoted at soda report on project management and they stated that half of the agencies they surveyed lost about 11 profit or more due to over servicing clients.

Speaker 3: 10:40

You know, when you move super fast, it's like yeah, yeah, we'll do it, we'll do it. Like, if you don't plan something, like everything is possible, you know the sky is the limit. But then when you start executing things, it's like, oh, shoot, you know we, we really cut ourselves short and we need to either spend extra hours on this project today and you will have to work 24 7 or something else needs to be. Uh, you know, added to this meaning more cost. So definitely, not having the right team members that are focused on the specific task is a challenge. And again, you know, like working with creatives, I always try to make everything a little bit more visual. Working with creatives, I always try to make everything a little bit more visual, and so when we discussed a brief or we discussed timeline is OK.

Speaker 3: 11:35

So imagine this. And how would you do this in case something was requested? So, in this scenario, when we discuss about why project managers for creatives and marketing teams is important, you know, imagine that. You know there's a doctor and I'm not trying to be too dramatic or anything, but this will give you an idea of what it's all about. Like imagine a doctor operating and all of a sudden, someone's asking hey, you know what, do you know who is coming tomorrow to do this, this and this, and they need to manage their resources. Like that's not going to work right. The same thing has been asked from the creative leads, you know, to manage their resources instead of focusing on the big ideas and strategizing the campaign. So, um, it's definitely uh conversations to have and, uh, I'm glad that we are talking about it because I hope this just initiates something. Even within a project management institute, they're so focused on IT constructions, now technology. I keep pushing. You know, like, hey, they don't talk about creatives, but hopefully there will be something.

Speaker 1: 12:43

Let's talk about that a little bit, because I think I'm with you, having worked in other spaces besides marketing, particularly IT, and happen to work in IT in real estate domain too, in some cases that project management is a very common thing there and it's seen as such, like it's a requirement. But I don't see it as often in marketing. I will say, with the exception of, maybe, agencies like really good agencies, tend to have good project managers. I will say that. But why do you think that there's less focus in marketing in general? Because we've talked a lot about creative, I would argue that there's other places within marketing that project management would be useful for the same kinds of reasons right, efficiencies and everything else. But I mean, what's your take? Why do you think it's less common within marketing?

Speaker 3: 13:36

Yes, definitely, project management is not very common among creatives marketing strategy, because the common thought is that everybody can do it, and I'm not going to argue about it. I mean basic project management, sure, of course, but the challenges that a lot of team members face is the fact that in addition to their task, in addition to their craft, they have to do all the other admin work. And I'm not saying they cannot do it, but if I, if what takes me five minutes, because this is what I'm focused on, will take the marketing manager or strategy director 30 to even more. Because they have to shift their mind from really focusing on their craft to something very admin, you know, changing the schedules, adding resources. This is the last thing on their minds.

Speaker 3: 14:40

So usually they procrastinate and put it on the back burner, like, okay, I'll do it later, but they probably don't do. Or they miss it and it's nothing bad about them. Like, ok, I'll do it later, but they probably don't do. Or they miss it and it's nothing bad about them, it's just that they're really want to succeed within their craft. So the lack of the proper project management or discipline within marketing organizations is the fact that you know, you, you not service your internal teams, but also the outcome that you can have throughout the projects, because the focus is missed. It takes us a long time to move from one space to the other, so you're missing that time to really focus on what's important.

Speaker 1: 16:37

Yeah, naomi, I feel like we've had this conversation before, but on your teams, do you have someone with project management as a primary focus, or do you have that as part of your team leaders' roles? It?

Speaker 2: 16:51

depends. It depends Like, if it's if it's a, you know, a common campaign that gets often run, the person who's responsible for the project is project managing it themselves. If it's bigger projects, like migration or an upgrade, or, let's say, there are, you know, we're trying to merge data together or consolidate platforms. In the beginning we used to have so our IT team has kind of a rotating set of project managers that get assigned to different business projects. But I think they quickly realized that it was actually hindering, not helping, the team, because our team, at least, we are quite technical and we happen to, you know, be able to manage it ourselves. Right, and usually I will take that role.

Speaker 2: 17:40

And then it just became like when you have someone from the outside trying not outside the company but outside of the team trying to project manage something that you know very intimately, it can become just kind of like, okay, relaying what we're doing essentially right Versus. Okay, these are the next steps. And it's like, no, we're defining the next steps because we know them. Um, and I think that's unique to marketing ops Um, if it was another business unit or another um functional group within an organization, um, it might be different, right, it's just. I think it's just the nature of marketing operations that we tend to be natural project managers.

Speaker 3: 18:21

Yeah, you're making a very good point. I recently actually joined a team to cover for maternity leave and the structure and everything that was outlined and onboarding that I went through was so well organized. I was able to do it and adjust within a week. So if you are saying that someone from outside comes in and creates a little bit of a steer, I think the element that is really important as project management is not just day-to-day tracking projects, but also onboarding, training, ongoing discussions about what's better. It's like creating something it never ends. It's always like there's something we can do better. So I think allowing having that extra person to oversee as a whole because that's how IT, that's how construction teams, that's how they look at the project manager, project manager for those teams they lead entire execution. It's not just part of the project, it's everything. So, yeah, I think that's the element that could.

Speaker 2: 19:46

I think that makes sense and like to have somebody who's kind of a little bit removed from the project to oversee and make sure it's on track, um, in situations where the person who's managing the moving parts is not actually also doing the moving of those parts Right.

Speaker 2: 20:03

But I think in ops, especially because we tend to be quite hands-on a lot of the times, we are also the ones who are. You know, we're not only writing the recipe, we're also making the dish Right. So it you just there's less lost in translation when we are project managing our own thing. And the closest example that I can give is when we did, for example, like a platform migration. We did at the time have a project manager assigned to the team to make sure everything was like really back to it and all the systems were, milestones were being met and whatnot. And then I think the project manager project manager quickly realized that there really wasn't a need and they just they self remove themselves Right, and I just provided like we just provided the updates to them in the format that we were used to.

Speaker 3: 20:54

Perfect team. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1: 20:56

So it's interesting because I have my perspective is maybe a little different. I've got a couple scenarios I want to run through. So one in my own experience. I have project management, program management experience in my background. I know I can do it. But when I've gotten large-scale projects I found it beneficial to have a project manager even if they aren't familiar with the marketing ops domain as much as anything to hold me accountable. Because I feel like where I am more valuable is in helping to manage the change, communication, making decisions for when there's sort of just options on how we might approach different problems and things like that, being the one who takes the the accountability for that as well. So I found it valuable to have a project manager for that because, to to joe's point right, I get caught up in the minutiae of an administrative part of the project management and then I don't do the other stuff and it's so it's. For me it's been a balance of what's the best use of my time. Now I've lobbied for that as a more like consistent resource, even if it was part-time and not had a ton of luck.

Speaker 1: 22:02

The other scenario is sort of the other extreme.

Speaker 1: 22:05

I think what you describe.

Speaker 1: 22:07

You know me where it's like it's a comp, maybe a common thing that's repeated over and over, and you've got a campaign manager, for example, who's running things, but it's in, say, the demand gen function or a content team or something like that, and I've seen scenarios where they're doing that but there's never really a commitment from the other parts of the organization to fully embrace that and they're kind of stuck in a spot where they publish stuff and say, okay, give me your feedback, but nobody's like it's never a priority for other people to provide them updates, so they're not really and they're not trained to be a project manager.

Speaker 1: 22:41

The most extreme version of that that I've seen is where each team had its own project management or at least queue flow right Request and queue and so if you were the one who was supposed to be orchestrating across all these teams, you had to go like one at a time. So you can imagine that and, by the way, communication between them, like if the decision was made to hear you know the creative and now you got down to the person who's building an email or landing page, then that was lost and so it was a really inefficient process. So that's that's. My fear is that if you expect these people to do that, and even if they are good and it's part of their job, there's still because of the way that people are incented that I think we run into problems.

Speaker 3: 23:28

Yeah, I agree with you, Like I mentioned being that glue, that you basically keep it all together and everybody. You basically keep it all together and everybody. You can work on the platform. Someone is working on the campaign, someone else is working on the creative, and they really live in their own bubble, you know. And then, when it comes to communication and tracking and making sure that everything is really transparent across the board, that's where the project management comes in, and basically making sure that it's not only communicated across the teams but also to stakeholders, also to the leadership, also to decision makers. So, at the end of the day, you know, we don't sit on the content, but the project management. The beauty of having someone really focused on managing the project is they always step ahead. You know, they're always like looking proactively, to like what is that it's coming next, so we can make sure that it's being done on time and the right person is in the room. So, yeah, totally Like, the more people involved, the more important it is to have that someone who's holding everybody's hands.

Speaker 1: 24:40

Yeah, so I've seen people in marketing roles that didn't have a project management title but maybe had something that. But if you looked at what they did on a day-to-day basis it kind of looked like project management, but maybe it's called different things. One place I know there was a traffic manager which was very much around more on the advertising campaign side, like you know, but I don't see that as often anymore. Do you think you know? Are you, are you seeing any of that kind of stuff still out there, or do you think it's a useful thing or not?

Speaker 1: 25:15

Do you mean like that someone is a, a project manager, but their title is something very different yeah, like so the one I've, I've, I know of I can't remember exactly where it was, but I had somebody who's a traffic traffic, yeah, traffic manager or something like that.

Speaker 2: 25:31

I think that was traffic controller yeah, so landing all the planes, making sure the emails don't collide together.

Speaker 3: 25:45

Yeah, no, what I know, it's still. It's still there Like traffic managers. It's like not existent title right now because it's for some reason a very negative take on it and people just don't like it. Maybe it's just too junior or something, I'm not quite sure. We tend not to use that, but rather project managers. If, in my experience, the other titles that I've came across of, like account manager or anyone who is responsible not only for the internal processes but also communication with the client, so like a mix of responsibilities.

Speaker 3: 26:26

So that's more in an agency world right as opposed to in a corporate environment In the marketing and in-house marketing assistant or marketing associate anyone like kind of like early entry level positions would be related to project management responsibilities.

Speaker 1: 26:50

Based on my experience and how I worked across different teams, yeah, I know I've worked with agencies before that have had really strong project managers as part of a team and again I was glad, even though it increased the overall cost of the project they might have led or been the project manager on. It was again I'm kind of thinking about, like how can that be used to, how can I leverage my time by having that resource available, since I didn't have it on my team.

Speaker 3: 27:23

Yeah, yeah, that's you know. I remember when I joined the team on at Firewood, they were servicing LinkedIn client and they never had project manager LinkedIn client and they never had project manager, and so it took a while to convince them that it's a good way of spending extra budget because, at the end of the day, the client servicing team was able to increase the business because they had more time to focus on the client versus, you know, tracking budgets, making sure everything is copied correctly between the documents. One of the elements that we implemented was the automation of documents. Speaking to one another, you know, finance team provided a burn report and then the team was copying and pasting into the different spreadsheet, and so we just started making sure that. You know, let's make beautiful spreadsheets, sure, but let's feed them with all the formulas and automation, so then you click the button and you're done and you don't really need me. It's right there and if something is broken, you know, let me know and we'll fix it, and it's five minutes versus you, you know, really going spending a day on updating the reports for the clients to make sure that everything is aligned with what the finance team has.

Speaker 3: 28:55

So there's, like you know, we speak a lot about, you know, communication and making sure everybody's on track, but also what's happening with the project manager, the proper project manager. You know we love to have everything organized in a way that the teams can move forward, but also in a way that it's everything is easy to find. Everything is really organized for the leadership to see where things are, how much money we spend, what's the budget left. Can we invest more money in this project without really diving in and spinning and trying to figure it out in the moment? So allowing the team to be active versus reactive.

Speaker 1: 29:42

Yeah, I mean, to me, a big part of project management is also being really clear about team structure. So one of the things that I've realized whether I have a project manager who's dedicated resource or even partially dedicated, what's been more important is being really clear like this is the core team that's going to be working on this stuff on a day-to-day basis. Here's maybe then an extended team that is your go-to for input on decisions and things like that, or in quotes requirements I hesitate to even use that word, but that's system heavy but that group and then there's sort of the you call it a steering team that hopefully you're only going to for major updates or major requests for changing timeline or change of budget, or yeah, we've got a decision we, but everyone we don't agree on. So I think that's an interesting one. So I know naomi, naomi and I probably have different views on this a little bit, so I'll just go ahead and bring this in.

Speaker 1: 30:44

So I think my take on this is I think that having project management within marketing I'm probably on the fence about whether or not it belongs in marketing ops versus somewhere else within a marketing organization is a valuable resource, and I would make a pretty strong argument that that's important. I think, naomi, you've got a different point of view that is less, less optimistic, that it would be useful. So I'm curious, like, what's your take on? Like where, where, where do you, where would you think it would be a valuable or why do you not think it is?

Speaker 2: 31:17

Great Putting me on the spot, michael. I am yeah, no, that's fine. I think part of the reason why I feel like I don't necessarily need one is because I have such a close relationship with our IT team, right, and I think if marketing or marketing ops does not, or if there's a layer, or they just don't communicate with them on a regular basis, then that's probably needed, whereas I sit on IT calls almost daily right, it's like I'm almost an extension of the team, to the point where there have been times where I've gotten comments from folks in IT because they thought I rolled up under the IT organization when I don't right.

Speaker 1: 31:56

I do think that your situation is unusual, that I think what your it team does for you is something that very often, more often, lives within marketing ops itself in a lot of places, and maybe that is part of it.

Speaker 2: 32:12

I think so.

Speaker 2: 32:12

I mean, I guess the if I'm thinking back to when we did have a dedicated project manager and it's been many years, right, Because we just haven't needed one assigned to us.

Speaker 2: 32:23

It was essentially me sitting on these calls and I'm just reiterating the same thing to it, but providing more detail. I'd be on the call with the project manager and they would just be defaulting to me for the responses anyways. And then it just became very clear that it wasn't. That was just like a layer that wasn't needed and like we were writing the documentation anyways, we were providing the updates, setting the milestones. We just it just wasn't needed in our case, because we did have those daily like calls with IT regular weekly cadences. I sit on weekly calls with the IT team on other projects that are happening within the organization that have nothing to do with marketing, right, but may potentially be tangentially related. And I just like sitting on those calls because I like hearing what's going on, and there are sometimes cases where overlap does happen, but because of that, I think it just is something that would cause more work as opposed to be a value add, right.

Speaker 1: 33:26

Do you think it was, do you think it was the sort of an unnecessary function for those projects? Or I hate to say this, but could it have been that particular person? No, not at all.

Speaker 2: 33:43

Not at all related to people.

Speaker 1: 33:45

No, if anything I almost would.

Speaker 2: 33:49

Yeah, no, if anything, I almost would like hold on to the PM longer, because I enjoy working with right. It's like it's not. It has nothing to do with that at all. It's just purely a case of like we knew what we needed, how to get it done and the timeline we needed to get it done. And we're able to communicate that because we have a very close relationship with the IT team.

Speaker 3: 34:13

And then can I ask you know, maybe it's a curve ball, but let's say one of your team members cannot attend, or is?

Speaker 1: 34:23

not available?

Speaker 3: 34:24

Would you be able to cover for him or how would you address it within you know, just the team that you have? Reason I'm asking for it is because having that extra person who oversees everything happening in your organization and always being proactive, finding, helping you find a way to solve for it, so just thinking like how that would.

Speaker 2: 34:52

To be honest, that hasn't been a problem because the people on if you're directly, if you're referring to people like directly on the team they are usually taking direction based on timelines and goals that I'm setting for them and we communicate very yeah, we communicate very well in terms of you know where certain things are, statuses. If we're working on a very big project, we're usually checking in daily, if not like weekly. I've just, we've just never had that issue because we do use also, you know, we use project management software. Right, we're an Atlassian shop, we use Jira, we have Showpad, like we tag everything and everything is just checked off in terms of shared documents and whatnot. So that is not, has not been an issue.

Speaker 3: 35:36

No, Dream team. I have to say dream team.

Speaker 2: 35:41

I know it's not. I mean, I do really feel like the. The closeness to it is the big one though.

Speaker 3: 35:50

Yeah, I feel the same way with creatives and really establishing relationships with strategy team, marketing team, just to make sure that they are definitely, you know, in connection with me, in a way that you know I can ping them anytime, I can tag them anywhere and they will be responsive and they will feel like, okay, she's just helping me, being accountable for it and really empowering me, versus nagging someone that something needs to be done.

Speaker 2: 36:26

Yeah, definitely, and I think, especially when it comes to large projects, sometimes things can change right, timeline can change, deliverables can change, and it's not always so black and white. There needs to be wiggle room baked in and just the ability and the autonomy to be able to make those changes and the I guess the without the red tape Right Definitely helps a lot. So that's and that's. I completely understand that. That is just the way that the organization I work for is structured and it's not necessarily the case for all organizations. And it has to be a situation where, if you can advocate for budget to get a project manager, I'm never going to turn down additional headcount or resources. I'm just. I'm just.

Speaker 1: 37:24

No, no, no, I'm with you, no, but I can. I think there are, like I asked the question about, like, was it the person? Because I do think I have worked with people who are project managers who actually were not helpful, and I've worked with ones that have been helpful, and it's hard for me to think about what were the characteristics of those people that were better versus not. And so maybe, joe, what's your take on what are some key characteristics of a good project manager, if someone does get the fortune of bringing somebody in and it would be useful and they want it to be useful uh, yeah, great question.

Speaker 3: 38:05

You know I worked with a lot of project managers and, just like you, you know some of them make things a little bit too complicated and the others were just those unicorns where you could just say what things want and then they follow and they understand and they move forward.

Speaker 3: 38:24

And the recent job descriptions that I've seen on LinkedIn and many job boards looking for experienced project manager with an entry-level salary or something like this, and I'm questioning it because if you really want a strong project manager, there's someone who needs to have experience, and experience in you know building relationships, listening, building relationships, listening, experience in understanding the landscape of you know marketing teams that they're joining. So project manager is. It's a skill that it needs to be developed over time in order for you to be really strong as a supporter for the team, for you to be really strong as a supporter for the team. And so back to the name of traffic manager. That's basically someone who can come in and take care of the timeline, take care of you know tracking and making sure everything is in the right order, Checking the boxes.

Speaker 3: 39:36

Checking the boxes exactly. But the project manager is the person who is really proactive and someone who understands how to move forward with the guidance. Without the guidance sorry, without someone telling them what to do, but rather by listening and really being empowered and owning their skills and knowing what it takes to create certain campaign, what it takes to, what it costs to engage this vendor versus that, and so really having that big picture in their mind in order to create a baseline for the project and then start engaging the right people. So, again, it all comes with experience experience from teams you work with, people that lead you, mentors you have in your life. I know that there are a lot of courses that you can take.

Speaker 3: 40:36

I took multiple courses for project management professionals, pmi, engaged me in a lot of events that I partnered with them and mentorship. But bottom line is that you have to actually do it in order to be good at it, you know, in order to be very strong, and I think I'm pretty sure it relates to most of the different jobs and roles that we play in different industries. But for project management, what I experienced, what I can tell, that listening and becoming a partner to the team that you work with makes you the strongest project manager across marketing and creative organizations because of how those minds work. It has to be very, it has to be conversational versus sharing, I think, what just popped in my head.

Speaker 1: 41:35

I said earlier that I couldn't describe what was different, but I just came to me, I think one of a couple of things. One is they are good listeners and they're really good at helping me. They were always good at helping me see things that were in my blind spots whatever those might be where I was too optimistic or I was ignoring a, you know, an issue that they were seeing you talk about being proactive, and they were willing. So seeing that as one thing, but they were also willing to speak up about it. Right, they were able to call bullshit on me or anybody else. They had like, no hesitation.

Speaker 1: 42:08

Sometimes there's some lessons to be learned about how to do that, but doing that is actually an important skill and just I know I've worked with people like where there were some sort of rough around the edges stuff and I would coach them on that. But I said I'm not telling you to stop that, like I want you to keep doing that because that's an important role to play. Just I'm going to guide you on how you should communicate it.

Speaker 3: 42:32

Yeah, definitely, and this is that empowerment and accountability. Accountability, you know it goes around everybody that you work with, not just you know your peers, but leaderships, stakeholders. You know being able to really communicate it in a way that it's straight to the point, but without defending defend, you know, anyone, or offending, sorry, anyone, that's that makes a difference well, it's gonna offend people and you've got to be okay with that, like I do think you can do, do think you can do it. You know you can do it a nice way.

Speaker 1: 43:03

There's a. It was funny. I was just thinking there's a little bit of an overlap here with the people who can do that from a project management standpoint to the people who are good at kind of the early stage of sale, at selling right, Cold calling and things like that, because you've got to be comfortable bringing up stuff that maybe is not comfortable and taking that risk that you're going to annoy somebody or something like that. So excuse me, Sorry about that, A little cough there, but you mentioned PMI.

Speaker 1: 43:33

I don't want to say PMI specifically, but I mean I know again, kind of going back to my own experience, people who've been project managers. I've had people with project managers who have certifications or specialized training that have been good and bad, and I've seen people who don't have it, who are also good. What do you like? You mentioned experience, right, what do you think is? Which would you rather? I don't know maybe, I don't want to put you on the spot, but there's, I think there's experience and there's sort of formal training, you know, is there? What's the role for each of those?

Speaker 3: 44:04

um, former training. Yeah, I mean what I'm doing now. I I've learned it through not only experience, but I spent quite some times, uh, doing pmp courses and understanding like methodologies, agile, because people keep asking what does it mean and how do you do it better. So I always try to look for better ways of doing my job, to be more efficient in what I do, and so learning and looking out for courses and speaking to people and connecting with mentors and connecting with people who are already experienced is definitely something that brought me to where I am. It's not just doing it.

Speaker 3: 44:47

So, if you opt for, you know, getting that PMP certification, I would say go for it. But it doesn't mean if you don't have that PMP certification next to your name, it doesn't mean that you're not good at it. You know. But I would encourage everyone to really looking into you know what are the new methodologies, what's the best way, what's the best tool, how to use the tool. You know the last 20 years like the tool. You know the last 20 years like I don't know how many project management tools we have right now probably hundreds and hundreds and how do you choose the right one? You know, and when you get to a new job like how can you decide, how can you advise? So definitely research and read and learn and that will make you definitely a stronger project manager across the board yeah, but I think it's funny, you bring up the tools.

Speaker 1: 45:47

I think, maybe not weekly, but probably every couple weeks, there's a thread in the marketingopscom slack that is about tools for project management, right, and it seems like it pops up on a regular basis. All right, so, jo, we are up against our time. So, as I thought we're not going to run out of conversation here, but is there anything that, before we leave or move on here, that you want to make sure that our audience hears about, that we didn't cover?

Speaker 3: 46:19

Well, like I said at the beginning, I can talk about it for hours. So if anyone wants to chat more, find me on LinkedIn and I would be more than happy to continue the conversation. I think it's a very important conversation because, definitely, that project management role can make a difference for a lot of people. And yes, I would be happy to chat with anyone and help out any way I can.

Speaker 1: 46:45

All right.

Speaker 3: 46:46

Everyone except for.

Speaker 1: 46:46

Naomi.

Speaker 3: 46:51

I'm taking it as a challenge.

Speaker 1: 46:58

It's all good. I know I give you a hard time, Naomi, about that, because we do have a little bit of a different perspective. But to be truthful, as much as I believe it could be valuable, I have not been super successful at fighting and getting that kind of resource on a consistent basis. Spots here and there, for sure, but not a full time. So it's not an easy thing.

Speaker 3: 47:21

It's not an easy thing to find someone, but if you find a person and you want them to succeed, send them my way and I will make sure that they know exactly what to do.

Speaker 1: 47:34

Sounds good. Well, Jo, thank you again. You already mentioned your LinkedIn, and we'll make sure that you will. We'll connect this to your profile as well Once this gets out there. Naomi, thank you, as always. Thank you Thanks to all our listeners out there and we look forward to continuing this string of great guests and topics and thanks for all your support. Bye everyone, thank you.