The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - Life Experience Matters | FF56

Episode Date: March 25, 2022

Inspired by a stay at home mom that had been out of the workforce who I advised to think about how she could map her life experience as she considers getting into project management. Also some thoughts for hiring managers to not discount the hundreds or thousands of repetitions parents get in managing tasks and milestones on the homefront.

Welcome to Foundations Friday, episode 56, Don't Sell Your Life Experience Short. This is inspired by somebody that I responded to and gave some advice to on Reddit, on the project management subreddit there. Highly advise all the project managers listening to this to go there. Also product and program managers, there's subreddits there too, so good information, good way to give back. And it was someone who'd been out of the workforce, who was a stay--at-home mom and trying to get back into it and thought, hey, project management sounds good. Well, think about that. Think about how masterful a stay-at-home parent

has to be at managing projects, right? We manage the individual tasks that our kids do. I have three kids. So spoke from a place of experience. I have three boys, 15, 11, and 9. And so throughout my, you know, 15 going on 16 year parental experience, I and others have managed individual tasks for our kids. We have monitored milestones each week, right, for the kids, gotten them to some standing meetings like sports practices. We have done some one-off tasks by taking them to go with their friends or girlfriends, boyfriends, etc. to dates, things like that. So while it's not as direct, I hope that if anyone that's in human resources is listening to this or has influence on those folks, that we think about our life experience as it can translate into the work setting,

and particularly project management, program management, product management, those kind of things, because, I mean, that's what we do, and it's for humans, which is way more important than a piece of software or a widget or anything like that. It's for putting humans, raising them, putting them into the world. And now do I also think there needs to be some formal education and knowing some standards for, you know, if you're getting into the project management field? Absolutely. But I wouldn't discount it. It's, I think a great opportunity. And this was my advice to get into maybe an administrator position within a project management office or PMO, maybe an associate PM.

I've seen some job descriptions for associate project managers that are pretty entry level as by design, right? That's getting in there. But you know, a way to, to there's the other thing is there's so much online training. I hope this podcast is helpful, right? If you know someone that wants to get into project management, I broke out the kind of waterfall phases on a few episodes. So go check those out. And of course on the the website, I have links to all those into the foundational five that again, I think are great if somebody wants to know how to get a handle on

a project of getting that leader's intent and objectives and org charts and resources and communications. But really just to say, if you're thinking about getting in project management or another field, and you've been at home or you've been out of the workforce, think about how you can translate your practical every day, every week, every month, every year life experience into work experience. And if you're someone who has influence over the HR, the hiring, the PMO, the whoever it is that would look at someone and think, well, they haven't done this or they don't have a PMP or they don't have this, but think about what they've done and how many hundreds or thousands of times they've done that and the muscle memory they have from managing

people, right? And keeping them alive and in the world as parents. So thank you so much for managing your time and putting some time into this podcast. I appreciate it. Some updates, new videos on the YouTube channel, People Process Progress podcast, YouTube channel. Also got links to those videos on peopleprocessprogress.com. So please check out the website there in a store. So I'm set up on Redbubble. Got some cool stickers, other things, especially the crests, kind of round crest, the

ongoing arrow with People Process Progress symbols. So if you think that looks pretty cool, maybe get you some. Also got the People Process Progress words, which look pretty cool, and the notebooks there and shirts. And so if you support the message, if you want to support the podcast, I would appreciate it. Others would appreciate it. And let's get this message out of helping people, keeping them first,

sharing our processes so we can all make progress. Thank you so much. Stay safe out there. Wash those hands and Godspeed.