12 minute read
Sector shifters
Dave Waller meets several project professionals who leapt from one sector to another. Their experience was a rewarding epiphany and a valuable lesson in self-confidence
After seven years in the Royal Navy, working his way up to a project management role in its helicopter fleet, Jacob Cooper needed a change. He wanted to work on large-scale infrastructure projects that would directly benefit people in their day-to-day. So he moved to Network Rail, becoming a scheme project manager on major rail electrification projects.
That’s when the doubts struck. In moments that will surely feel familiar to any project managers who have found themselves switching sectors, voluntarily or otherwise, Cooper feared he didn’t understand the details of this new role. This made him nervous, and it didn’t take long for him to feel worse.
“In my first week, I was sat in a project workshop, and they were talking about being unable to install the catenary wire,” says Cooper. “They had to replan it, and the project was slipping. I interrupted: ‘Sorry, can you just run me through what the catenary wire is?’ They all just looked at me. It’s the wire that holds the electric wire. I didn’t even know the basics of that. I just thought: ‘What have I got myself into here?’”
An epiphany of sorts
This may strike a chord with readers right now. With the pandemic making organisations rethink their operating models, the possibility of change looms larger than ever, and it’s understandable that the prospect of shifting sectors should feel daunting. But according to Cooper, and others who’ve jumped aboard the sector-shifting train, the journey is always well worth it.
Indeed, it didn’t take long for Cooper to realise that his lack of sector-specific knowledge wouldn’t affect his ability to project manage: to develop and interrogate a schedule, to manage project resources or to liaise with stakeholders.
“I soon realised I didn’t need to understand every aspect of how something was constructed,” he says. “I was able to use all the experienced people in the organisation to support me on the elements I didn’t understand. And my project skills meant I could ensure it was delivered within budget and to the correct time and quality. That was a really big learning for me.”
He’s certainly not the only one to have had that epiphany. After seven years in the water industry, Kitty Ho was conscious she’d only ever worked in the public sector and was keen to gain experience in the faster pace of the private. She landed a programme management consultancy role in the property sector, through Faithful + Gould – despite feeling she didn’t tick all the boxes defined in the job ad.
LIAM JACKSON, ØRSTED
“With the impact of COVID-19, the oil and gas company I worked for was looking to make redundancies. I was about to become a father, and I wanted to take the rest of the year o , so I o ered to take mine. Then this job came up at Ørsted, the renewables company, based only six miles from my house. Renewables is a sector with a big future, and I want to do my part in reaching net-zero carbon by 2050. I took the weekend o , and started there on the Monday.
JACOB COOPER
“Coming from oil and gas, I expected the o shore wind industry to be really advanced. You see these new turbines and fancy boats with all the technology. But when you see it from the inside, many of the processes are only halfway there. When you’re scheduling work in oil and gas, for example, you have a five-year look ahead for projects. Here we’re lucky to get six months. At the start of the year, we had 38 projects. In just three months, we had another 50 come in that no one knew about.
“The first few times you face these challenges, you end up swearing to yourself. Every year we send teams out to inspect our North Sea turbines. We have well over 300, across six sites. I asked the guys how much these inspections cost. They didn’t know – they just placed an open purchase order and the contractors got on with it.
“So I’ve since written a couple of project-tracking procedures to cover the scheduling, and I started monitoring the cost of these inspections. I worked out that, because they were doing them in winter, some of the sites were only 35 per cent productive. On one, we were paying £5,000 a day for the inspection team. If bad weather stopped them going o shore, they got sent home on pay. Now we’re looking at moving the work to a better season, and using our internal sta instead of contractors.
“As a project manager, you can bring new ideas to a sector that help save money or increase productivity or safety. There’s a lot of satisfaction in that.”
KITTY HO
“I felt imposter syndrome for the first time in my career,” she says of the shift. “And that only deepened as I watched everyone in their element, while I was trying to get to grips with this new environment. The stages of a property project were different from what I was used to. I was used to being the one who knew everything. Plus I’m a bit of a perfectionist. Here I was always wondering if I’d done a good enough job.”
Tracking down chances to learn
Ho tackled the problem by being proactive in seeking opportunities to learn – by asking to sit in on meetings and conversations that would help plug the gaps in her knowledge. Plus she’d stayed in touch with former colleagues she could confide in; people who knew the way she worked, and who could give her invaluable encouragement on her new challenge.
One area in which Ho found herself working was the exciting field of electric vehicle charging. These projects were challenging because they weren’t new just to her: the subject-matter expert was new to the client; and the contractors hadn’t necessarily delivered electric vehicle chargers before either.
Stakeholder management was tough too: gauging personalities and how best to work with them to ensure the project was progressing.
Like Cooper over at Network Rail, Ho turned to skills she’d brought with her from her previous sector. “I really drew back on my previous experience of working with other people, applying trial and error, trying to find which framework worked best for them. While the processes were different, my project management knowledge was transferable. And stepping outside my comfort zone really challenged me to see what I’m capable of.”
Cooper found plenty of other competencies applied in his shift too: leadership, the ability to understand and plan resources against a schedule, and conflict management. Then there was risk and issue management. He reports that, while some risks were too technical for him to spot, he was spotting others ahead of everyone else.
The advantages of an outsider
“I found myself identifying risks that were blatant to me, but which nobody else saw because they’d all been tunnelvisioned into a certain way of working,” he says. “I was coming at it from a
FACING A LEAP INTO A NEW SECTOR? HERE ARE SIX TOP TIPS
1Get a mentor. Talk to someone who can encourage you and walk you through the process. Having someone to bounce o will alleviate those “I can’t do this” thoughts.
2Trust your toolkit. From communications skills to conflict management, project managers have a huge range of valuable skills. Shifting sectors is just about picking the right ones at the right times.
3Do your research. Look up the organisation and sector news online. This will give you a gauge of how you can apply your toolkit before you even start.
4Get stuck in. Don’t wait for your manager to introduce you to people. Embrace being the newbie by immersing yourself in conversations, and asking questions, from day one.
5Go easy on yourself. It’s okay to make mistakes, as long as you learn the lessons and move on. So exercise compassion; enjoy stepping outside your comfort zone; and don’t let fear stop you from being yourself.
NIRU THIYAGAN, DIGITAL FINEPRINT
“A few years ago, I was coming to the end of a two-year contract at Public Health England, when a maternity cover role came up at Octopus Investments, a fintech start-up. I’m young and I like being able to e ect change quickly, so I wanted to try the private sector.
“They didn’t have much project governance. I decided I wouldn’t make it hefty, but I did enough to safeguard management expectations. It was so much faster to get sign-o . Within nine months, I’d done four or five software delivery projects that would have normally taken a lot longer. They were able to see how things improved, and I got a really positive response.
“After another year back at the NHS, I moved into insurtech at a company of fewer than 20 people. I spent the first six months working on a waterfall-agile hybrid model, and from January began moving the team to completely agile.
“Again, I was new to the sector, so when I began implementing the project management o ce, I had regular open conversations with them, asking if it was working. I got a lot of really good feedback.
“As a project manager, you build a toolkit and you take it along with you. Switching sectors is just about what you take out of the toolkit and how you tailor it. So even though the pace was faster, I was able to use the strong project communication skills I’d picked up at the NHS. I also found myself using the same delivery skills and Gantt charts.
“I’ve seen people who worked in the public sector for years and they become too scared to switch. But as long as you can manage stakeholders and change, it’s really a no-brainer. Whatever sector you put me in now, I’m able to transfer my skills. And if I need to learn about an industry, I can. That fear is gone, and that’s so important.”
new point of view. So if you change sectors, it can be very beneficial to the organisation you’re joining. That was a huge learning for me. I was thrown into a very challenging and complex project, and I proved that it is absolutely possible to change.”
Others have taken a bumpier route to that same realisation. In 2017, Lexie Smith was made redundant from a project management role at an insurance firm – a “pivotal” moment in her career. “I didn’t want to feel like that again,” she says, “so I decided I’d move around on my own terms from then on.”
A month later she was accepting a project management role in facilities, running a full office strip-down and refit. She was still in her early 20s, so wanted the budget responsibility on her CV. What she got was an eye-opening experience – moving into facilities as a young female was tough.
“I endured something of a challenge,” she says, “working with tradesmen who weren’t too friendly taking instructions from a young female with a lack of experience in that sector – as well as navigating through the usual politics. I was signing off contractors’ risk and method statements for using tools and equipment I didn’t know. And all the paperwork competed with what I wanted to do as a project manager – to deliver on time or sooner.”
Ben Wright
The good, the bad and the ugly
Smith pushed herself to continue, to secure the experience for her CV, and left after nine months. Yet the lesson she drew isn’t to avoid trying new things. It’s that there’s plenty to be gained by leaping into a new sector – even if you do have a bad experience. She talks about how she got to see “the good, the bad and the ugly”, and was taught to fail fast and learn quickly. And she can now take her new understanding with her through the rest of her career.
“Now I can quickly establish the types of projects I’ll enjoy and the people I’ll like working with,” she says. “That’s key for me now. And I can go into any organisation and know within days whether there will be any conflict. That’s another really good skill to have, as you can then work around it or build up your resilience to deal with those situations. So I’m not just telecoms or HR. I’m a project manager who can do whatever you need me to.”
When asked about the benefits of switching sectors, Cooper goes even further. He says if it wasn’t for switching sectors, he’d never have achieved his chartership. He simply wouldn’t have the breadth of knowledge, or the exposure to the whole project life cycle. Shifting sectors has shown him new ways of working, given him new structures to learn from and handed him an expanded network. But there are more psychological benefits too.
“Until you’ve moved sector once and proved to yourself you can do it, you’ll always have that doubt,” he says. “If, for whatever reason, I needed to move sector now, I’d have absolutely no hesitation doing so – as long as it was a good project that provided the right opportunities for me to develop.
“I’ve never looked back. I’ve shown myself not only that I can transition, but also that I can excel in a new sector. That alone is reason enough to move: to prove to yourself that sector is no boundary in project management.”
LEXIE SMITH
