5 minutes with… Billie Watts
Billie is a Senior Project Manager at The Creative Copywriter, a fast-growing creative agency that gives brands strategy-powered words that sparkle. Based in Norwich, she started her career as a project manager 5 years ago, fresh out of university and is now fully settled into a super-fulfilling role that involves spinning plates, listening to people’s needs, and making things happen.
This article was originally posted on LinkedIn in June 2023 and Billie has kindly given permission for the content to be added here.
Why did you choose a career in delivery or project management?
Ever since I was a small child, I’ve had a love for organising and the small details that come with it. Bookshelves, wardrobes, my parents’ coat stand - you name it, I’d organise it. Then, growing up and going to school and university, I’d always make sure deadlines for my work were being hit days in advance - the satisfaction of this was unbeatable! I realised that I really enjoyed the act of making lists, ticking things off, and the whole time management aspect around that. All things that come in handy for project management.
Fresh out of university, I was offered work experience in an early stage website development agency. I found that I absolutely loved what’s involved with working as a project manager in an agency and I’ve never looked back since!
A big reason why I continued down this career path once I was on it is because of the satisfaction that comes with knowing that you are trusted and relied upon by clients and colleagues alike. One of my favourite things about being a project manager is making clients happy. But of course, I need to balance that with keeping my teammates happy too with regards to their workload. Seeing the smiles on everyone’s faces when a successful project is done and dusted is thrilling!
What advice would you give someone starting out in the industry?
People are going to look to you to keep on top of everything related to your project, so you need to make sure you’re knowledgeable and accountable. When a client or a stakeholder at your company asks you for an update about the project, you need to make sure you can answer it in a timely fashion. That’s absolutely not to say that you can’t respond with “Bear with me, I’ll need to find that out and come back to you.”, but it’s so important to be knowledgeable about your projects. At the end of the day, you are the person who will know the most! The best advice I can give as to how to stay on top of everything is to note down all details - deadlines, potential delivery issues, a client’s likes and dislikes, company information. Whether this be in the form of lists, or through use of a project management platform like Monday.com. But… if you do miss something, it’s not the end of the world. We’re humans, not robots!
Another tip that’s worked wonders for me is: if it’s going to take less than 2 minutes, do it now. And if it’s going to take longer than 2 minutes, write it down on your to-do list.
One last (but big!) tip - positivity is KEY. It might be hard sometimes to plaster on a smile when it feels like you’re firefighting, but if you stay positive - even when a project is going wrong - that rubs off on everyone else, making it much easier to keep everyone motivated and steer the project back on to a smooth course.
Have you ever worked on a particularly difficult project? Why was it rubbish/tough/hard?
Having worked agency-side for five years, I’ve worked on 100+ projects - lots of which went smoothly, but - of course - there will always be a few that you look back on not-so-fondly. I worked on a pretty difficult project a few years ago during the COVID lockdowns that involved a lot of missed deadlines due to misaligned expectations about how long things would take, as well as a big budget overspend. As a project manager, it can be super demotivating to keep missing deadlines, especially as a HUGE part of your role is ensuring that’s not the case. But lessons were learned and new processes were put in place regarding the scoping and planning of projects which meant that situations like this could be avoided in the future.
It’s also worth mentioning that I’m glad I’ve experienced tricky projects, because it’s helped me to grow as a project manager - if I’m always in my comfort zone, I’m not going to learn!
What do you think are the most important skills for a delivery or project manager to have?
This was extremely tricky to choose, but I’ve given myself a limit of three(!):
Time management, problem solving, and people management.
Time management because you’re in charge of project schedules and deadlines, making sure everything is on track and being seen by the right pairs of eyes, at the right time.
Problem solving because you’re absolutely going to come up against bumps in the road during projects. Yes, you’ll have projects that’ll pass by without a hiccup at all (so smoothly that you feel like it must have been a dream), but more than likely, a project will face some kind of obstacle. This could be delays client-side, minds being changed, a creative being ill, a pandemic(!)... something is always going to happen that means you need to stop, think and come up with a solution.
And lastly, people management. Although your role is to manage projects and not people, your whole job is centred around people. Creatives, clients, stakeholders, third-parties - you will need to be good at communicating and making sure everyone knows what’s expected of them and when. This doesn’t mean micro-management, it simply means making everyone’s life a little easier. Including yours… making sure everyone has visibility and knows what’s expected of them makes them a lot less likely to chase you!
What do you think are the biggest challenges facing delivery and project managers today?
So it’s not a time-sensitive problem as such, but I think the biggest challenge (for agency-side project managers) will always be unrealistic deadline expectations. It takes a lot of good communication, clear explanation and - above all - bravery to tell a client or a stakeholder that a project just isn’t going to hit their desired deadline. Telling someone ‘no’ never gets easier with time, but it’s the explanation around that ‘no’ which steers the outcome. Outlining the reasons why and also providing a solution (e.g. a new deadline) will be received in a much better way than if you’d simply pushed back.
What projects would you have loved to have been involved in?
I’d love to be more involved in something like this - a forum/networking group for project managers. The ‘5 minutes with…’ is an amazing idea!
This post is part of a services called ‘5 minutes with’ series of articles from people in the delivery management and project management space.