How to show your value as a project manager in low-maturity companies

Hi! Hope you're doing well.

Have you ever taken on a project at a company where project management is still a novelty, and realized the hard part wasn't the project, it was the ground it needed to happen on?

In this article I talk about the challenges a project manager (PM) faces at traditional companies with low maturity and little project management culture. And about three specific traits that, in my experience, help a PM show their value even when the structure doesn't help yet: resilience, ease with relationships and influence-based leadership.

The scenario: the "old house" and what comes with it

Let me start with what weighs the most. Projects that touch processes and systems built up over years run into liabilities and technical debt that are hard to map. You plan scope, time, cost and expected returns, and halfway through, you discover the "old house" you're building on has a compromised foundation.

That's rarely the only problem. See if any of these situations sound familiar:

• Priorities change without alignment or communication, and projects get left unfinished along the way.
• The portfolio has over 200 work items, most of them "running" in parallel.
• Getting a committed delivery date is a negotiation all its own.
• Areas in conflict within the same project.
• Inefficient planning, with each area in its own silo.
• The target keeps changing, with no success criteria defined upfront.
• Information scattered across several systems, little data and little visibility into capacity and impact.

These are common situations at large traditional companies. If you recognized three or more, you're not alone.

Methodology and tooling help, but they take time to take hold in an environment like this. At the start, what keeps the PM going is small wins through personal traits. I'll detail three of them, each with practical actions you can apply right away. Obviously, these are just a few of the traits needed to stay relevant, among others.

1. Resilience: keep delivering value when the scenario changes

Resilience is absorbing the impact of a change or an inherited problem and still moving forward, even without full clarity on the whole map or on what needs to be delivered. In a low-maturity environment, priorities change, deadlines have no owner, and the portfolio grows faster than capacity.

What to do:

1. Treat technical debt as risk and as scope. Map out what the liabilities could affect and share it with the sponsor in the language of impact: time, cost, risk and opportunity cost. An uncomfortable conversation at the start costs less than a surprise in the middle of the project.
2. Log and communicate every priority change: what comes in, what goes out, who decided, and what gets put on hold. When change has a visible cost, it starts getting decided with more care. I always say that in 6 months nobody will remember that one-off, local decision that ended up having a significant impact. Logging it is more than just covering yourself, it's making the impact of decisions visible.
3. Deliver in pieces that stand on their own. If the project gets interrupted, what's already been delivered still holds value.
4. Ask the people doing the work for their commitment on timing, making the assumptions explicit. Showing that you're aware not every variable is on the table yet, and that adjustments happen, tends to build more trust and commitment. A deadline imposed from above doesn't generate commitment.

2. Ease with relationships: without trust, the project doesn't move

Areas in conflict, planning done in silos, and leadership that's very technical and not very managerial all share the same root: relationships. Each person takes care of their own piece without seeing the whole. The PM who talks to every party, without taking sides, becomes the missing link.

What to do:

1. Talk to each area individually before asking anything of them. Ask what they need from the project, what they're afraid of, and what a good outcome would look like for them.
2. Structure the project so each area owns a meaningful part, and success depends on the sum of all of them. The project ends up standing above the areas, and the conflict loses fuel.
3. Bring the areas together once a week. The goal is to show each one's progress and encourage people to ask for help and collaborate with each other. Following up is still part of it, but it gets lighter when people know where their contribution impacts the final goal.
4. Build the bridge between the technical and the managerial sides. With technical leadership, bring the view of timeline, capacity and decision-making without competing for space. With the business side, translate the technical into impact. Few people at the company deliver that translation, and it's valuable.

When I talk about relationships, I went into more detail on trust and relationship-building practices in this article on how to encourage collaboration on projects.

3. Influence-based leadership: when you don't hold the pen

At traditional companies, the PM rarely has formal authority over the people they depend on to deliver. Influence comes from your ability to build relationships and become the example others look to.

What to do:

1. Facilitate relationships. Be the person who raises issues, asks questions, asks for help, and above all, fosters the relationship between people and areas. Your attitude is always being watched and factored in on projects.
2. Project above everything: when you shift the focus away from one specific area and put the project above it, it makes your work easier. Whether it's a follow-up, an individual or a collective agreement. People understand it's not personal, it's about the end goal. Acting with that confidence will give you influence-based leadership instead of formal authority.
3. Credibility: this is what holds it all up. Credibility is the foundation of trust, without it, people are unlikely to listen to or act on your influence. Doing what you said you would do is the core of it. If you said you'd call, call; if you promised something, deliver it. The more your actions back up your words, the closer you get to being a positive influence in your circle.

Recap

I started by talking about difficult ground: years of technical debt, unstable priorities and little structure. Resilience helps you keep delivering, relationships bring people together around the same goal, and influence guides action when formal authority is missing.

There's no one-size-fits-all recipe. Pick one action from one of these traits and start applying it.

Which of these situations are you living through today? And which trait has been holding up your work? Tell me in the comments. And if you know a PM going through this, share this article with them.

Note: these points reflect my own experiences and perceptions and don't represent the views of any specific company.

Take care!

Leandro | PMP | Project and Portfolio Manager