“Don’t Leave”

Back in July, I wrote about my amazing boss, and how she was (*sob*) leaving me to go work elsewhere within our vast organization. The good news is that I still get to see her from time to time since she has a weekly meeting in my building, so she’s not completely gone. She has also Skyped me during the workday a couple times just to check in and see how everything is going.

In July I also wrote about the promotion that I received, and how even though my work won’t change much, I’ll be reporting to my old boss’s boss and dealing in much higher level work.

Things have been going well in my new role thus far. The big project that I’ve been working on since mid-May is going well and I’ve been getting consistent feedback from not only the corporate side but the vendor side that everyone is very pleased with how I’ve been doing. My new boss emails me almost weekly to tell me how grateful she is for the work I’m doing and how impressed she has been with my level of work. Then, a couple weeks ago I got a random email from someone on the vendor team to tell me he appreciates the work I’m doing and that he thinks I’m doing a great job. That was very nice to hear!

I had a meeting with my new boss (who knows when I’ll stop calling her my "new" boss?) a couple days ago and she asked me what I wanted to do once this project is done in October. I told her that my first request was to take a local one-day class I found that focuses on the foundations of project management. I told her that while I can handle any project given to me, I know nothing about the origination and closure of projects – funding, budget, ROI, etc. She immediately told me to sign up for the class as soon as the current project was over and that she agreed it would be helpful as I move forward.

I then told her that I wasn’t sure how she wanted to utilize me – one-off projects, long-term programs, department initiatives. I told her I was up for just about anything to get my feet wet. She mentioned a couple ideas to me, and one sounded very interesting. I told her I was interested in that one for sure, and she said okay. So it looks like I already have my second project lined up for when this one closes.

One thing that struck me funny during our discussion of our current project was when she said, "You know, I have a feeling that [the vendor] is going to offer you the opportunity to help with this project at all of our other locations because of the work you’ve done on this one. They are that impressed with you. I just hope you don’t take that offer."

I told her no, I wouldn’t…but part of me for a brief, infinitesimal moment thought, "That would be kind of cool."

In the long run, I’m thinking that in a year or two I want to investigate getting a PMP certification which can only help me in my future work, and I want to continue growing in my role here at my current employer. I ran the numbers required for PMP certification and I have half of the hours required, and 1/3rd of the months required thus far. Once I get a bit closer to their requirements, I’ll approach my boss to ask her about it.

I’m also planning on seeking out a mentor within the organization who has long-term experience as a Project Manager within the company and can be a sounding board when I need one. I find it helpful to find people who look at things differently than I do, to help weed out things I might have missed. My old boss was really good at doing countering my ideas without disregarding my ideas completely, so I’m hoping to find someone with a project management focus who would be willing to do the same thing she did.

But all in all, it’s going really, really well!