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Read time: 7 minutes

An uncomfortable truth: Not all skills are equally valued in the workplace.

Some skills are seen as more important, prestigious, and associated with senior leaders. Other skills are associated with junior team members, or with less prestigious roles.

It’s unfair. It’s not reflective of the importance or difficulty of the skills in question. But it’s true nonetheless.

Project management is one of those skills.

Be good enough at project management

There’s a reason why no one ever said, “Wow, this CEO was so effective because they were good at project management. Let’s write a biography about this person.”

The CEO might actually be great at project management, but they are not KNOWN for it. They are applauded for contributions that are deemed more valuable, important, and rare…

Like being “strategic.”

I have a whole future post on what “being strategic” even means, but for now, we can all agree that being strategic is a good thing. Most managers have told their direct reports to be more strategic. Most of us have heard our managers tell us this at some point in our careers.

If you want to be perceived as strategic, you need to be good enough at project management to get your own work done, corral others to get their work done, and shepherd projects across the finish line… 

But not so good at it that you’re primarily perceived as someone who is only “in the weeds.”

I want to be extremely clear: Being good at project management is important. I’ve seen many operators stall in their careers because they were disorganized and not detail-oriented. And with the macro environment we’re in, more managers and leaders are being asked to be hands-on. 

I actually hate operators and leaders who think they’re above being in the weeds. I want to tell them to GTFO. I believe real leaders can be in the weeds and are great at their functional craft (beyond the role of managing people).

So I’m not talking about whether project management is important. 

I’m talking about being PERCEIVED as being primarily good at project management—when you actually do much more.

Do a PR campaign for yourself

I’ve now worked with multiple coaching clients who are extremely competent operators and have been labeled “good at project management.” And it’s not a positive thing—at least not at this stage of their careers.

They were traditionally the person trusted to “get things done.” To reach the next level, they are now being asked to think more strategically, lead others, build systems that scale, shape ideas, come up with solutions to ambiguous problems, etc.

But here’s the kicker:

My clients were already doing much more than project management the whole time. 

For them, this wasn’t a competence or skills issue. It was a perception issue.

If you do both strategy and execution, but people mainly see you as good at project management, or good at [insert a trait or skill usually associated with junior people], this is very frustrating. 

You’re not being fully seen, which is demoralizing in itself. And to be ONLY seen for the more “junior” type of work damages your growth prospects and doesn’t give due credit where it’s deserved.

If you feel like you’re being mislabeled for your work, there are ways you can fight this.

The main suggestion I have: Do a PR campaign for yourself. 

If you think about a PR campaign, it’s basically strategic messaging repeated over and over to replace something people used to think. That’s all it is. 

1. Replace the label you dislike with another label. It’s much easier to replace than to remove entirely—if you remove, you create a void. Instead, give people new words to describe you.

2. Everything can be described through multiple frames. If you don’t proactively pick and assert a frame, one will be assigned to you—and you might not like the framing people use.

Stop describing everything through a project management lens

When you describe your work (and what you see around you) mainly through the lens of project management, it reinforces the perception that your main identity and value-add is, well, project management. 

For example, here are phrases that sound very project management-forward.

• “Coordinated between X and Y teams”

• “Ensured stakeholders were aligned”

• “Tracked deliverables and dependencies”

• “Made sure everything ran smoothly”

• “Kept everyone in sync”

• “Herded cats to get everything done on time”

• “Figured out the phases and milestones for the project”

• “Created templates and workflows”

These phrases frame you as someone who facilitates rather than someone who drives the strategy and owns the outcome. If you are already doing strategic work, the issue isn’t the nature of the work—it's accidentally describing your work primarily through the lens of coordination and process.

Making stuff happen is hard. Getting people to do things is hard. It requires a lot more than project management.

Do not let people unintentionally mislabel and diminish your contributions.

Use language that sounds strategic

The same underlying problem, decision, and actions can sound more or less strategic--depending on how you describe it. 

Before: “Coordinated between X and Y teams…”

After: “Led X and Y teams to [do strategic thing]”

^ The “after” isn’t only about avoiding the word “coordinated.” It’s about how you coordinated groups in order to achieve your goal. The focus is on the strategy, not on coordinating teams.

Before: “Created templates and workflows for…”

After: “Created the playbook in order to [achieve company priority]…”

^ Here, playbook sounds more strategic than templates and workflows. Also, there’s a focus on the company priority, whatever it is. The playbook isn’t an end in itself. It’s a means to an end. This makes you seem more strategic because it shows you have the bigger picture in mind.

Before: “Our homepage looks disorganized because there are too many product options in this dropdown. It’s messy looking.”

After: “When we have so many product options on our homepage, it dilutes our positioning. Customers aren’t sure what we can offer them, which means they might get confused and bounce. If we fix this, we can strengthen our funnel and make the most of traffic we’re driving to our homepage, which could lead to major improvements in our conversion/customer acquisition.”

^ The “after” focuses on the impact of the problem. The impact isn’t only that the page looks disorganized—this sounds tactical and trivial. The “after” talks about the business impact of the problem on growth and revenue, two things that are almost always on senior leaders’ minds (and are associated with being strategic).

I don’t have a list of phrases that simply sound more strategic because sounding more strategic depends on the content of what you’re talking about. The content is highly situational and context-dependent.

Still, here are some rough guidelines on how to sound more strategic:

• Share the strategy. Don’t only mention tactical details.

• Share your analysis and insights. Don’t only share status updates.

• Frame the problem and why it matters. Don’t only say how to solve the problem.

• Talk about your task as a means to an end. Don’t treat the task as an end in itself.

• Share your point of view. Don’t only summarize what happened.

• Discuss the business impact. Don’t only discuss the logistics.

As always, use your powers of observation. Look at peers or leaders around you who are seen as strategic. What do they say or do? How do they describe their work? It’s very doable to hear how they describe their work—you’re in meetings with them, you’re seeing their messages in Slack, etc.

Jot down how they tend to structure their thoughts, the vocabulary they use, and the way they position their ideas. This is all fodder for you to pattern-match and read between the lines. Borrow inspiration to describe your work so you can practice sounding more strategic.

To be clear, you should obviously aim to actually be strategic, not just sound strategic. If you already ARE thinking about strategy, you may want to update how you describe your work to match.

Has your work ever been mischaracterized in a way that doesn’t reflect your true contributions? Hit reply because I’d love to hear from you.

Thanks for being here, and I’ll see you next Wednesday at 8am ET.

Wes

PS Here are more ways to connect:

1. Follow me on LinkedIn or Twitter for insights during the week (free).

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