Project Management Tips: Create Better Communication in Remote Work

Project management has always been an important topic for us at Lemonade, but with the recent push to remote work, a new premium has been placed on remote communication. How can project managers bridge distances and empower their teams’ and clients’ successes?

We’ve had people ask us what our secret is at Lemonade, how we manage to turn around quality work on schedule and without drama but, the truth is, there are no shortcuts or hacks for project management. There are only people and tools, and the tools only exist to enable the people to do their best work.

And while standardization certainly streamlines these efforts, it is also a trap that leads project management teams to treat all clients and deliverables as though they were the same when they, of course, are not.

So, while we’d love to give you a listicle of the best project management tips and tricks, instead, we are going to break down how we at Lemonade understand project management and how we uniquely shape each and every project around our clients’ needs and preferences.

In short: We don’t aspire to be project managers; we aspire to be project leaders. 

A Tool is Only as Good as the Team It Supports, and Management and Leadership are NOT Synonymous 

As much as we love (and we mean LOVE) Asana, project leadership is not about any specific project management tool or platform, which exists to enable connections, not to forge and maintain them.

As servant leaders, project managers should be the glue holding different parts of a company together, a pathway for interdepartmental communications and a support system that ensures each team member has the resources they need to do their best work.

Sure, working together, our team could organize the chaos of outer space and the universe with Asana, but the emphasis in that sentence is on working together, not on Asana.

Make sense? Try it this way: You can have the best organizational tool in the world, but if the people you are organizing have not bought into the collective team vision, then what are you actually organizing? Not even the best cowboy out there can herd a flock of seagulls.

That’s why it all comes down to teams, not tools, and project leadership, not project management. 

The Two Sides of Standardization and Why No Two Projects are the Same

Another lesson we’ve learned is about standardization, the sweetest sounding word in the world to a project manager. It allows for optimization, organization and order. It means greater efficiency and, frankly, it just makes project managers’ lives easier. Assigning, monitoring and supporting projects that take on a standard form means less legwork and less confusion.

The trouble is, we’ve learned that standardization is also the enemy of efficient client-facing project leadership. This is because no two clients are the same. Yes, this sounds like something you might see on one of those cheesy corporate posters (“Customization: Because No Two Clients are the Same”), but that doesn’t make it any less true or any less of a guiding principle for us.

In order to know how to lead projects for our clients, we need to know our clients first. This is why Lemonade onboards every new client with a detailed discovery process. This process helps us find a new client’s tone of voice, brand identity and everything else we need to know to help them thrive.

But this process isn’t just about understanding how to best support their marketing initiatives from a strategy and content perspective, it’s also about understanding how to best support them from a project leadership point of view.

What is their communication style? How hands-on do they want to be? How, when and how often do they want updates, and how much visibility into our process is best for them? These are the types of questions Lemonade’s project management team is looking to answer during the discovery phase.

Some clients, for example, want to be in the kitchen with us, cooking the entire time. They want to be in our Slack, they want to be commenting on content drafts, they want to be in the meetings. And that’s great; we’re here to support that.

Other clients want to be as uninvolved with our processes as possible, more like a diner waiting in a restaurant for the chef to serve their food. They want their deliverables, they don't want to know how the sausage is made, and they appreciate their space. And that’s also great; we’re here to support that too.

We believe every project is unique and should be treated as a collaboration. We adapt with our clients’ needs and personalities by tweaking our standardized processes to ensure every project runs as smoothly as possible.

In Project Leadership, Happiness is Contagious

At the end of the day, the title Project Manager is a bit deceptive because it implies micromanagement, box checking and directives.

But, as Jenevieve Byrd, Lemonade’s Director of Project Management explains, “I am not anybody’s boss, I’m a support piece. My role is not to boss anybody around or tell people what to do. My team and I are here to be the glue, to keep people together and to keep everybody aligned.”

Project leaders support the many people who come together, balancing their priorities while keeping people and projects moving forward. They are not micromanagers. As Byrd sees it, “We lead projects to completion by empowering team members with the necessary tools and resources they require to meet clients’ expectations.”

Project leaders are also conduits of happiness. Yes, we know that sounds strange, but hear us out.

Happy teams equal happy clients—this may feel a bit simplistic, but sometimes things feel simplistic because they are simply true. Happy and thriving teammates produce work that delights clients. Project leaders, then, are a conduit between the teams and the clients, ensuring both sides are happy with the work being produced.

This is what is meant by servant leadership—supporting teammates so they can do their best work. What’s the point of hiring the best creatives in the business if you aren’t going to empower them to do their best work and give them the space to do it?

So, when people ask the secret to our project management success, our answers might be a little frustrating because there are no fly-by-night solutions. Prioritize leadership over management, break free of standardization in processes and communications, and champion happiness among teammates and clients by providing support and resources.

With Lemonade, there is no secret recipe. We just use the best ingredients.