A project manager’s job isn’t to know everything—it’s to know how to figure it out.

Early in my project management career, I had my first agency role. There were so many times a client asked a question I had no idea the answer to, but I felt it was my role as the agency representative to know. After all, didn’t the client hire us because we know how to do all the things they asked that they couldn’t do themselves? It was a crash course in corporate improv and how to avoid saying “I don’t know” at every turn. However, as the years have gone on and I do know the answers to a lot more things, I’ve learned that saying “I don’t know” in the right way and at the right moment is not only acceptable, but can be the best answer.

With experience, I have learned that it’s not realistic for any person or company to be hired under the assumption they know a) absolutely everything about a given topic and b) everything about how that topic applies to your work, product, needs, etc. If you hire someone under that assumption, you are setting everyone up for failure, including yourself and your own organization.

I’ve realized over the years that my philosophy and approach to project management is not that it’s my job to make everything run perfectly. I don’t have that power (nobody does!). My job is to make everything run as smoothly as possible with the things I can control: checking in on my teammates and their progress, unblocking work, and just making sure everyone has what they need when they need it (or, if not, as soon as I can get it).?

I think an agency’s role is similar, especially in fields involving technology, AI, data science, and so many other constantly shifting and evolving variables. Our job is not to constantly be all knowing and all seeing about all of these things—our job is to stay ahead of the curve where we can so that we can serve our clients, but it’s also the ability to learn new information and adapt and solve problems.?

That’s what we’re hired to do: solve problems. With that, the ability to figure out how to solve a problem is just as important as the ability to solve it itself.

Now that I’ve been around the client services block a few times since my first agency role and continued work with clients for Phase2 , I’ve realized the importance of being comfortable telling a client “I’m not sure, but…”

1. “...I will figure it out.”
2. “...I know who to ask.”
3. “...can you provide some more details to help me understand?”

Imagine yourself on the receiving end of the above vs. a “Yep, can do!” to save face. The latter might seem better in the moment, but if that happened regularly and then was followed up with finding out the other person didn’t know, wouldn’t you prefer they had just said that at the beginning so it could’ve been figured out and solved sooner?

It’s easy to have some imposter syndrome in just about every job and feel like any time you don’t know something, it means you’ve failed to a degree. In reality, that’s not imposter syndrome or a failure on your part—it just means you’re a human who doesn’t know everything about everything, just like everybody else. The more we’re comfortable with that reality, the more we can get done together.