 The Sustainable PM series focuses on four drivers for a holistic, long-term career:
In my first article of this series, I shared three essential pillars of career sustainability. This article focuses on the second driver: a sustainable lifestyle. In 4 Ways Your PM Career Sustainability Can Go Wrong, Trish is a hard-charging project manager who seems to always be working. She believes she has balance because she takes time to eat and go to the gym. She works hard and plays hard. She has opportunities to dial it back a bit and not run so hard, but when she collapses while leading a Zoom meeting, the decision to dial it back is made for her. Read more at ProjectManagement.com.
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In a recent phone call I told the CEO of my insurance brokerage that after being a loyal customer for 15 years I had moved all my business to other providers. Given our long-standing relationship, I felt I owed him an explanation; not because I wanted to see someone fired, but because I wanted him to know my reasons for leaving so he could put any lessons learned to use.
It started about seven years ago when the person assigned to my business insurance seemed to lose interest in me. He wasn’t on top of my renewals, made me do work that he could have done for me, and didn’t competitively bid my insurance. I moved all of my business insurance to another agency. A similar issue happened in the past year with my personal insurance; I simply didn’t feel that I was important to my agent. The final nail in the coffin came when my bank notified me that my homeowners’ insurance had lapsed two months earlier without any notification from my insurance agent. I then reached out to another agency, who quickly bound coverage for me at 10 p.m. on a Saturday evening.  Some time back I wrote about 4 Ways Your PM Career Sustainability Can Go Wrong. In the article, I introduce the concept of career sustainability and the importance of running as if you were in a marathon versus a sprint. The article focused on four fictional but realistic characters:
Each of the characters had some successes, but also had some blind spots that impacted their sustainability in their respective jobs:
I’m a strong advocate of career sustainability. I believe that skills, lifestyle, relationships, and stewardship are key drivers to help you as a professional be more consistently effective and content in your work and play lives. To that end, what follows is a four-part series focused on each driver:
Let’s kick things off with the first driver. Read more at ProjectManagement.com. 
Some time back I was in a meeting with a project manager who presented the status on his troubled project to the project sponsor and other executive stakeholders. This project was of high interest to the sponsor and stakeholders as they were depending on its successful completion to make some major changes in their respective organizations. The project sponsor asked the project manager a very straightforward question:
Why is the project slipping? The project manager went into a long, meandering monologue. The sponsor interrupted and asked the question again. More meandering from the project manager. Seeing the sponsor and other stakeholders’ growing frustration, the project manager’s boss stepped in and said they needed to do more homework and would come back the next day better prepared. The next day, the project manager’s boss presented the status and answered questions--along with a new project manager. |
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January 2026
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