2 Ways Project Managers Can Remain Visible in the C-Suite

Project managers can get so involved in their day to day work they may lose sight of keeping in touch with company executives and decision makers. The following are couple of suggestions on how you can keep yourself and your team visible and viable in the C-Suite of your company.

Learn to Speak in the Language of an Executive

Executives are about return on investment and increasing value. They love innovation, uncharted territories, and business opportunities that will propel the organization forward. They like growth, efficiencies and process improvement. They don’t like excuses, complaining, stagnation, inactivity, or wasting time.

Your challenge, then, is to translate the current project you are working on into language that will resonate with the executive. Let’s say you have the proverbial 30-second ride up together in the elevator and the CEO asks you what you’ve been working on. You have a choice to make. You could say “I’m working on implementing a new project management software package”, or you could say “You know, we recently ran a study and found that there were missed opportunities when it came to project collaboration which resulted in 30% loss of productivity. To fix this problem, I’ve been working on an enterprise-wide initiative that will not only recapture that 30% loss of productivity, but also introduce an additional 20% increase on productivity once this new project management software is implemented…which, by the way, will be done in the next two months.”

What a difference between the two responses! The CEO undoubtedly knows about this initiative since it is company-wide, however, he will appreciate and make note of your excitement about the opportunity, the cost-savings it will introduce and the fact that you understand the impact to the business that your project will have.

Market Yourself and Your Team

A second way of remaining visible at the C-Level is to market yourself and your team. You need to let them know the business value you continue to bring to the organization. We’re not saying always going around patting yourself on the back, but tastefully letting people know that you and your team’s contribution bring value to the organization.

Here’s an example of how that can be done. You just received an email from someone who benefitted from the project you finished implementing. It may be the project collaboration software project. The email states that it’s easy to use, saves them a lot of time, and has indeed increased their productivity. All you need to do to market yourself and your team is forward that to your manager. Your manager will then forward that to their manager, their manager will forward it on to their manager, and up the chain it goes. This type of feedback makes everyone look good, and your name, along with the team are attached to another successful project.

Whether or not you feel comfortable with marketing yourself, we can no longer delude ourselves with the feeling that “our work will speak for itself”.  Business moves too fast and there are so many distractions that your work will quickly be swept under the carpet unless you take a moment and have others pause and reflect.