Level Up Your Project Management Career with Continuous Learning

STEVE HENDERSHOT 

You’ve learned a ton in your life, from formal education to on-the-job training. But if that learning stops at any point, you’re in trouble. 

Without continuous learning, how are you supposed to grow—to shore up the soft spots that you discover as your career unfolds, or to address new tech like artificial intelligence? Continuous learning is essential for individual professional growth and overall organizational health and innovation.

If you don’t yet have a continuous learning strategy, fear not—our show today can help you get started.

In today’s fast-paced and complex business landscape, project professionals lead the way, delivering value while tackling critical challenges and embracing innovative ways of working. On Projectified^®, we bring you insights from the project management community to help you thrive in this evolving world of work through real-world stories and strategies, inspiring you to advance your career and make a positive impact.

This is Projectified. I’m Steve Hendershot.

How much of what you need to know to do your job well did you learn in school? What about the knowledge you’ve picked up throughout your professional career? They’re both essential, of course, but most project professionals would struggle to carve out long, successful careers and deliver ongoing value to their organizations without adding new skills and knowledge along the way. 

A smart, well-implemented continuous learning strategy helps project professionals keep up with the skills they need to excel in the profession and keep their career goals on track, all while staying flexible enough to respond to market trends and innovations. 

Today we’re talking with a couple of project leaders about how to design a continuous learning strategy that’s well-planned, adaptable and durable. We’ll begin in Nairobi; Projectified’s Hannah LaBelle spoke with Alfred Maina, a technical project manager at cross-border payments company Thunes, about his continuous learning journey. 

MUSICAL TRANSITION

HANNAH LABELLE 

So, Alfred, I want to start our conversation with the “why.” Why is continuous learning important for you, and how does frequent upskilling improve your work and help futureproof your career?

ALFRED MAINA 

The world of project management is evolving a lot: new technologies, best practices emerging very constantly. And it’s very important for us to continuously just learn and stay ahead of the curve and remain relevant in the field.

I think it’s also very important to enhance your competence. The best way to do it is learning new skills and expanding the knowledge base and being able to be effective and very efficient in anything that I’m doing from a workplace perspective. Once I enhance my competence, it is easy to tackle very complex challenges with greater confidence and deliver better outcomes at the end of the day.

It’s important, too, for personal growth. I consider it lifelong learning. It’s always a very rewarding journey that keeps one very engaged, stimulated, excited of the new challenges. And at the end of the day, you get to expand on your horizons and become a very well-rounded individual.

HANNAH LABELLE 

Let’s dive into your continuous learning strategy. How do you identify skill gaps or areas where you are looking to improve, and what are the factors that you consider in this process?

ALFRED MAINA

How I look at it is from four areas. The first one is definitely self-reflection: reflecting on my strengths, my weaknesses, areas that I think I should improve on my performance. Because at the end of the day, you know yourself. Okay? Just sit back and do a proper analysis on the areas that you need to improve and become better.

The second way to identify my skill gaps is feedback. I find it very important to actively seek feedback from my colleagues, my supervisor. Some of it might come through performance reviews.

The third one that I think of a lot is, of course, industry analysis. When you look at industry trends, best practices, try to identify emerging skills and knowledge gaps. I think it’s one of the best ways to do it. If we look at the latest PMBOK^® [A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge] from PMI, that’s one of the things that made me think, “I think getting a certification on agile will help me just become a better person in the market.”

And finally, if you just look back at the previous projects and ask yourself, “Which areas did I encounter any difficulties or limitations [in], and what did I do about it? How can I address them better?” These are just areas that I think help me identify my skill gaps.

HANNAH LABELLE

And when you’re talking about that feedback, I know you had said performance reviews. When are some other opportunities besides those reviews that you could maybe reach out to folks and ask for feedback?

ALFRED MAINA

I’ll think about it even from a project sprint session. When we have a sprint, it’s always good to review the project and check what went well, what didn’t go well, and what are the challenges. But it’s also a very good opportunity to get feedback from the team members on what they think about you. They could come back and say, “Alfred, I think you push too much when it is on a Friday because you want to fill up your report. Why don’t you make sure you check on us on Thursday instead of pushing us on Friday end of day?” So, I find retrospectives are [a] very good opportunity to get feedback.

Secondly, I like monthly check-ins with some of the stakeholders in the project. And this can come in very informal one-on-ones where we can do it maybe after two months and just get to talk and ask what they think about me from a project manager perspective. It can be with your supervisor, but it could be even with the project team members that you work with.

HANNAH LABELLE

So we’ve talked a little bit about how you’re looking at your own skills and different areas like that. So say once you determine a skill or an area that you want to improve, what are the opportunities that you’re trying to seek out? Is it trainings, webinars, conferences, mentors?

ALFRED MAINA

Projectmanagement.com has a lot of very fantastic webinars. And the beauty about them is that even as you watch them and listen to them, you also get to add to yourself some more professional development units. I find that a very good place to first seek some knowledge from [is] PMI. And thus, listening to some of the podcasts that are there and getting to learn from them. The second place that I look at is, of course, professional courses. We have tons of online courses that people can sign up for. And three, depending on the skill set that I’m trying to improve—if it is a communication issue, there are people I follow on YouTube. So I think as a project manager, we have such a huge toolbox of resources where we can just gather as much information as possible.

HANNAH LABELLE 

How do you balance that learning with day-to-day project responsibilities as well as your personal life outside of being a project professional?

ALFRED MAINA 

That’s a good question and a very interesting one because I think of myself not just as a project manager for the office, but I look at it also as a project manager in my day-to-day life. So what do I need to do to make sure that I balance the two? Things like time management. I’ll prioritize my learning activities, and one of the ways I like doing that is having scheduled, dedicated time in my daily routine. Once I’ve finished up with my family and I’ve put my girls to sleep, I have a dedicated hour to just do some learning. I also am a very keen person on microlearning, learning in small, manageable chunks.

We have a lot of technology in place. There are a lot of online tools, resources that can be used to learn, in very flexible ways. And that really comes out very well. And, of course, if you have to learn, you have to set some boundaries. You have to draw a clear line to when work ends and when learning starts, and when the personal life starts. And just to balance all those three, to ensure that I don’t burn out and have an unhealthy balance at the end of the day.

HANNAH LABELLE

How has learning a new skill or further developing an area of expertise helped you in your project management career? You talked about going for the PMI-ACP^® [PMI Agile Certified Practitioner] certification. Maybe talk a little bit about that, how gaining that certification and learning all the skills helped you in your career.

ALFRED MAINA

Mastering a new skill boosts your confidence. There’s just something about having completed a particular certification, for example, like ACP or PMP^® [Project Management Professional] or even the PMO Certified Practitioner. There’s just something about increased confidence because you feel confident to challenge and to actually tackle complex situations.

Learning a new leadership or a communication skill can help you become a better leader. And I think for me, the one that is always very important is you become a better decision-maker and you, of course, get the recognition that comes with the skill that you’ve added. I get recognized by my colleagues, my supervisors, and of course that would lead to new opportunities within the organization and even career advancement. I’ve found myself getting a lot of LinkedIn inboxes [messages]: “How did you go about this? How did you address this? How did you find a way through particular topics?” Which I find very interesting because now that shows that there is some recognition on the expertise that I’ve just added to myself.

HANNAH LABELLE 

Which are the top skills that you think project professionals should consider improving through continuous learning strategies? And why these specific skills?

ALFRED MAINA 

The first one that I think has evolved over time, and everyone should have, is agile. I think, based on what I’ve seen, we are no longer in the journey of waterfall. I believe agile is something that guides them on adaptability. Agility is really crucial for today’s fast-paced environment.

The other one that needs to be looked at as a project manager is data analysis and visualization. Making data-driven decisions is very key right now. Can you gather data and be able to analyze it and be able to share with your teams or your supervisors and give them direction based on that?

Strong communication and collaboration skills are very important in this day and age, when you’re building effective teams and creating relationships with the various stakeholders. I think emotional intelligence is coming up a lot. We need to understand and manage emotions, both my own and others.

Another area that I think we need to really look at is keeping up with artificial intelligence. AI is really transforming a lot of industries and the marketplace. It’s also coming into project management, and so we need to stay informed. We need to experiment with those tools, and also seek some training on them. We have a lot of webinars or courses that are coming up; participate in those workshops and get to see what’s really happening. I always challenge project managers to experiment with some of those tools. Look at what are their functionalities, what will be possible outcomes or benefits on some of these tools. I did the generative AI course by PMI. That was a really fantastic course that really gave us a lot of guidance on how to just play around with generating very good prompts and how to use those prompts to analyze different situations. I found it very, very effective. 

HANNAH LABELLE

We’re coming to our last question: What’s your top piece of advice for other project professionals who are looking to create or start working on their own continuous learning strategies?

ALFRED MAINA 

I’ll give five points on what I would call a call to action. My first call to action is: Regularly assess your skills against the industry trends. My second call to action would be: Prioritize learning. Align with both your personal goals as an individual and maybe with the organization that you’re working in. If your organization is keen on moving [to] the PMO route, for example, and you think a PMO certification would help you do that, you can prioritize your learning based on both your personal and organizational goals.

Then the third call to action is: Leverage various resources for continuous improvement. There are a lot of e-learning portals. There is a lot of free content out there. You can go to PMI and get some of the certifications that they have there for free or paid and just leverage some of these resources.

My fourth call to action is: Establish a mentorship relationship. Get someone who you can talk to and be able to just get personalized guidance. Somebody who can help you in your career, in your direction. Someone who can tell you, “This is not the right way. This is the best way.”

And the final one, it’s all about prioritization. If you don’t allocate dedicated time for learning amidst your busy schedule, there is no way you’re going to be able to meet specific milestones in your continuous learning. It’s not going to be easy, but find ways while dedicating 30 minutes, 40 minutes to just getting to learn.

MUSICAL TRANSITION

STEVE HENDERSHOT 

You have to take control of your continuous learning, but your organization can also play a part. So next let’s shift to the project management office, or PMO, and how PMO leaders might help professionals plan strategic ongoing education. I spoke with Americo Pinto, the managing director of PMO Global Alliance at PMI. PMO Global Alliance is the world’s largest community of PMOs, and the organization became part of PMI in 2023. The two organizations have a common goal—empowering professionals to deliver value. And continuous learning is a big part of that. Let’s go to my conversation with Americo, who is based in Rio de Janeiro.

MUSICAL TRANSITION

STEVE HENDERSHOT 

Americo, it’s great to talk with you. I want to kick off our conversation with how you look at continuous learning strategies from the perspective of a PMO leader.

AMERICO PINTO 

One of the most important things in terms of establishing a continuous learning strategy is to understand how flexible you should be to reach your goals. The idea is that you can have a very good idea about what you will do in the short term and establish the groundwork in terms of what you intend to do in the medium and the long term. So there is a door for you, open, to be flexible and to adapt to every new trend, to every new need that you can see at the market, you can see at the organization. Establishing this plan is very important, but also keep the flexibility and your ability to be adaptable anytime it’s required.

STEVE HENDERSHOT 

It sounds like what can’t be in the strategy is “Next year, learn Topic A. The year after that, investigate Topic B,” because you don’t know what those topics or knowledge areas are going to be. So what does a strategy look like that is flexible enough, elastic enough, to accommodate the different directions that one’s career or industry trends might go?

AMERICO PINTO

There is something that is pretty challenging—the fact that things are changing all the time. And when we are creating this strategy, something can happen, like we had very recently AI and ChatGPT, for example. And of course, it will impact in some way our plans. So I said that we should be flexible and adaptable, it’s true. But the challenge is, how can we foresee these changes that will arise? Most of the time it’s impossible to see them, to anticipate what will change, what will arise in terms of new demands. But the point is, we have to embrace them. 

So what you have to do is to see what’s happening around you and try to learn a little about each new thing, new technology, at least to understand how they can be applied in business and organizations in your work, even if you don’t use that right now. But it will open your mind for possibilities that in the future can arise, and you’ll be more prepared for them, at least for identify[ing] them when they come up.

STEVE HENDERSHOT 

So what would you say are some of the building blocks for a continuous learning strategy? I’m thinking along the lines of how many hours per week or month are dedicated to upskilling, what kinds of workshops or industry conferences professionals can attend, and things like that.

AMERICO PINTO

In terms of continuous learning, what is really important is to have a kind of balance in terms of the ways that you will learn. Formal education is very important, no doubt. There will be a lot of opportunities for training, e-learning, so you should leverage them. There is also something that is quite important today—that is certifications. It’s also an opportunity for you to learn about some new piece of knowledge, and at the end of the day, you also have a certificate to tell to the world that you are really an expert on that specific topic or an area. So this is something good.

We also have other opportunities that are not so formal, but in a certain way, they are very important. For example, you should participate in seminars, conferences. Especially if they are in-person events, they will give you not only some new knowledge but also the opportunity to hear from your peers or to learn from people more experienced than you. So it’s not only an opportunity to learn, but it’s also an opportunity to build [your] network. And this network will be something very important in the future, more and more as you ascend in your career. There are other possibilities also that are communities like PMO Global Alliance. At communities like ours, you have the opportunity [to] interact with people that are experienced like you, sometimes more experienced than you. It’s a kind of collaborative learning. So all of this will give you an opportunity of improve your network and get more and more knowledge to your toolbox.

STEVE HENDERSHOT 

Let’s say we’re looking at the short term—one year or two, tops: What skills or knowledge do you think PMOs or project professionals need to succeed? What should they be eyeing in terms of continuous learning?

AMERICO PINTO 

Some skills, some competencies will be very useful in the short term. And these competencies should be aligned in some way with your current work, with your current organization. Because this is the way that you will have a background that will help you to thrive in your company right now. In the medium term, and especially in the long term, what really makes a difference is a set of skills that you can use everywhere, anytime. PMI calls these skills as power skills, and it makes all sense. Because we are talking about leadership, communication.

There is something very important that I’d like to share with you because it’s a big trend for PMOs—it’s a customer-centric approach. PMOs for a long time were seen as a support area, providing technical solutions for their customers. And when I say “customer,” I’m talking about the executive level, I’m talking about functional managers, or even project managers, because most of the time they are not part of the PMO. In the last years, PMOs have been evolving strongly, and now they are more and more being perceived as solution providers. So it means that PMO leaders have the ability of understanding their customers, understanding the pains, understanding the needs, and creating tailored solutions that can make sense for that specific company at that specific moment with that specific customer. This is something that looks technical at first glance, but it’s not. This is something that you will take with you for the rest of your life because it can be very, very useful for any kind of professional, including PMO professionals, including project managers, or even executives. So this kind of ability, in my point of view, connected with those that are more traditional but very important, like leadership, communication, strategic vision—all of them will keep you prepared for almost everything that can come up.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

As an individual, how much should you prioritize “My company seems to like X, Y and Z, a particular brand of technical expertise,” versus what you might otherwise choose. How smart is it to map yourself to your company?

AMERICO PINTO 

There will be many aspects that will influence this decision. In my point of view, the first one is where you are in your career. Depending on where you are, actually your actions will be different, because you have a short term, a medium term and a long term.

More and more, we see that it’s not really usual that people spend, like, 30 years in the same company. You need to show the value of your work to the company where you are working today, but you cannot miss the point that in the future, other opportunities will arise. We should find a way to be valuable for the companies that we are working [at] today, no doubt, and we have to understand them, especially the executive level—what really makes a difference for them, what they expect from us in terms of demands, what their pains are. And this way we can focus on those things that can really generate value for them. It will make you be recognized. But you should always look ahead and think about your career in terms of medium and long term so you’ll be prepared to take the opportunities that will arise.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

How can PMO leaders help project professionals find the areas where they could grow or upskill?

AMERICO PINTO

They can help a lot, this specific group, in terms of developing these strategies, in terms of continuous learning. PMOs are experts on project management, sometimes much more than project managers in many companies. If you count on a consultant, you expect that the consultant is more mature, has more knowledge, because he or she will provide you advice or provide you solutions, frameworks, software. So it’s very common that PMO leaders can become advisors for project managers, identifying their strengths or encouraging them to develop these skills. In many companies, it’s something made in a little more informal way. But the best practice is establishing development plans that can help these people on their learning process, especially in the short term. The PMO leaders can support project managers, especially when they are not full-time project managers, on developing their skills and give them some direction on what will be important for the future.

But, to be very honest, don’t forget that you are responsible for your journey. You are responsible for your career. Of course, there will be companies that will support you, they will provide you with some guidance, especially if you are in the beginning of your career. But you have to take the lead of this process, right? You have to understand what’s happening, to find information that can be useful for your continuous learning process, and you have to establish the actions that will help you to reach your goals.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

What advice would you offer PMO leaders who are looking to help project professionals grow in their careers?

AMERICO PINTO 

If you are in the beginning of your career, it’s the time of focusing on gathering all knowledge you can. You should try to understand software, methods. And in the short term, you should be very aligned with what will make you valuable right now at your company. It will give you a chance to jump to the next level, at your company or another organization.

In the medium term, and especially in the long term, what will make you valuable is not how much you know about all this technical stuff. It’s your ability to do something with that. So your ability to create solutions, your ability to do something that is not a traditional way of using that software or that methodology, but it’s what you need, at that time, at that company. So what I’m saying is, if you can focus in the beginning of your career on learning about those things that will let you create solutions in the future, it will be something amazing and you will become a very, very relevant professional in any company. In the long term, there will be many possibilities. And every day, every month, every year, you will review, maybe redesign and adapt your plans to what has happened in your life. Because life is not something that we can plan totally, of course.

STEVE HENDERSHOT 

Americo, this has been really insightful. Thanks for a great conversation. 

AMERICO PINTO

Thank you. 

STEVE HENDERSHOT

Thanks for listening to Projectified^®. If you like what you heard, you can listen to more episodes on your preferred podcast platform or visit PMI.org/podcast. And please subscribe to the show and leave a rating or review—it’s always great to hear from you. Hope you can join us next episode!