I was put in a PM role on a large project last year and it didn't go particularly well - six months after coming off the project I'm still ruminating on what happened and need help finding the way out. More explanation inside..
After the pandemic hit last year, and in the face of significant lay offs across my company I was put into a PM role on a project far larger and more complex than I typically work on. I poured everything into it for six months trying to make it work, but the deeper I got into it, the clearer it became the project had deep, intractable issues I wasn't going to be able to solve. Including but not limited to a micromanaging client, limited budgets on all sides, hasty handoff of a project with a 5+ year history, poor staffing, unachievable but also rigid schedules, absent leadership, lack of support, and more. As a kicker the core team was 90% male, led by me, a relatively young (30's) woman, which added a generalized atmosphere of "huh was that sexism? Well...gotta move on I guess...".
After six months I was completely burned out trying to manage it, but soldiered on for another three before coming to a "mutual" decision with leadership it would be best for my mental health to move on to something else. I cried to three separate VPs on the phone, so it wasn't good. At the same time, my team DID actually get all the contracted work done, and reasonably well, so it wasn't that we didn't perform - it was more that I was just losing it trying keep everything on track. All formal feedback on evaluations has been positive and understanding of the project challenges. The only people I cried at were my leadership - I don't think the rest of the very large team was aware how much I was struggling.
Since then...I feel like I've been demoted (but still hold the same title and got a 3% raise in April). I've been doing work at a level I was doing 4 years ago, with limited scope. On the one hand, I have fairly broad visibility to the project needs that exist, and it does make sense I'm doing the work I'm doing. On the other hand it feels terrible and like I'm going backwards and have lost the trust of leadership. That they need to "handle" me. I'm concerned they think my struggles with the project were related to the scope and scale, and not to everything else that was the actual problem. In fact, I found the scope and scale to be relatively manageable - rather it was the combination of micromanaging and budget constraints that really made it untenable.
It's been six months since I came off it and I still am hung up thinking about it almost every night. If I get to the core of what I think I need, it's to restore my confidence in my work, but the work I'm doing now just makes me feel worse because it's such a step back.
I think what I'm looking for is to hear from others who may have experienced something similar, and how you got over it? Or suggestions on how to move forward at work. It just feels so unproductive to be this stuck on it after so much time, but I just keep going around on it and I'm not sure what they way out is?
I've been applying to other jobs, thinking maybe a change of scenery and a fresh start would be good but then I think perhaps I'm just running away from it (plus all the leads are moving verrrrry slowly right now, so that's not an immediate solution). |
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