Bloom: Kim Verbist
"Project Management involves more than people often think. It requires both technical knowledge and soft skills as well as the necessary patience to go through the entire life cycle of a project step by step." Kim Verbist sounds decided. She clearly has experience with the role of project manager and yet she regularly tries to refresh the theory. "Continuing to learn is very important to me. I never want to run on routine." If you ask us, the latter isn't going to happen any time soon.🤩
Project management is a profession
What do you want to be later? It is a typical question, which Kim Verbist did not have an answer to when she was seventeen. "I then went on to study Communication Studies at KU Leuven, because it is a broad, general education. Afterwards I still had no idea what job I wanted, but in the meantime I knew what I found important. Continuous fascination, variation, flexibility, ... It is the common thread in what I like. I like to take on new challenges and as soon as I have mastered something, the interest ebbs away. That's the way I am."
"A university degree was a starting point for me. 'After that we'll see,' I thought. And that turned out to be entirely justified."
Then it seems logical that you started as a consultant.
"Maybe, yes. Getting to know the different business processes in different organizations really appealed to me, just because of the variety. But I hadn't thought about it like that beforehand. A university degree was a starting point for me. After that we'll see,' I thought. And that turned out to be completely justified. During my studies, besides pure communication sciences, I had also learned a lot about the functioning of a company, how to deal with crisis situations, and how best to communicate with customers and other stakeholders. It fitted in 100% with a job as a consultant."
Kim got into the IT world after college because consulting seemed interesting to her. Her first employer happened to be an IT company. She ended up working as an SAP consultant for almost eight years.
So how did you progress to project management?
"PM is a lot of communication, lol. My move into project management was a very conscious choice. In teams, there is often a natural dynamic that develops. People take on the role that suits them best. I was particularly interested in coordinating a project, and that triggered me to project manager want to become one. I then went for that."
"It's not like you automatically become PM if you do it long enough."
"It's not like you just evolve into the role, that you automatically become PM if you do it long enough." Such reasoning does too little credit to this job. Project management is a profession! It's a job for which you have to take targeted courses, a job that you really have to learn."
As a conductor
Kim enthusiastically continues her plea. "In a good PM training, there is a lot of attention to personal coaching and to team coaching, but also to thoroughly studying cases. You learn a lot of methodologies, the hard skills so to speak, and techniques for consciously applying soft skills. A project manager does much more than ensuring that all stakeholders work together. Every project goes through a certain cycle. It is important and valuable to make all the pieces of the puzzle fit properly. To work step by step and action by action towards the desired end result and to sufficiently involve everyone within the organization. This is why a PM must also be engaged in change management. As a project manager, you are actually the conductor who sees to it that all the available skills are deployed correctly and reinforce each other."
How do you fill that role? Do you personally think there is anything that could be improved?
"I'm constantly trying to learn and refresh the theory I already know from time to time. If you let go of that, then I think you start running too much on gut feeling and routine. Then your reactive intuition takes over from your proactive, more professional self. I don't want that. At the same time, I must not forget to pay enough attention to 'the people'. Different teams are always being put together for each project, different combinations of personalities. That creates a new dynamic every time. If I'm lucky, it blossoms naturally and then my focus is fully on the tasks at hand. But a group of experienced people does not always spontaneously form a well-oiled team. Sometimes I realize this too late and then I do not immediately understand why the project is not going so well. Then I should take some time to zoom out and shift my focus, but that's not always easy."
"For each project, there are always different teams assembled, different combinations of personalities. That creates a new dynamic every time."
"Flexso looks at the client's company culture as much as possible and then tries to assign a PM who matches it in terms of personality. After that, a team is put together with available consultants and it is up to the PM to get the different profiles to work together in the most efficient way. The sooner I get to know the personalities behind all the profiles at Flexso, the better I will succeed."
What do you still want to accomplish within this job?
"I would like to obtain some additional certifications in project management," Kim says decidedly, "in order to be considered for the role of program manager in larger projects. I think it would be very exciting to manage multiple projects overarchingly and ensure that interdependencies are aligned. Today, that's still future music, but I do see it as a possible next step."
A little resistance can't hurt
We ask Kim if she is proud of the course she rode so far.
"Pretty much. Even though I am secretly a little jealous of people who have reached wherever I want to go faster. But I am proud that, despite the headwind at times, I have always persevered. The IT world is still often a man's world. At Flexso itself this is not very noticeable, but I have worked for customers in other countries with other cultures and there is sometimes a different leadership style, more authoritarian and hierarchical. As a woman it is then even more difficult to prove yourself. That doesn't stop me, it even motivates me to show what I can do. A little resistance now and then is a trigger for me to become an even better project manager."
How does it work at Flexso?
"At Flexso we don't speak of 'managers', titles don't mean much at Flexso. Being able to work purposefully and persevere are talents that are highly valued here."
"I think it's important that our profession gets the recognition it deserves."
"I started at Flexso with the intention of professionalizing the role of PM internally, to give it more maturity. Meanwhile, we form a close-knit team with all the project managers. At least once every quarter, we sit down together to see what we can do better. Which joint tools should we use or how we can standardize templates, for example. We also organize information sessions for the rest of the organization. What exactly does a PM do, what contribution do we make to projects and what is the impact? I think it is important that our profession is well understood and gets the recognition it deserves. And that every project team knows it can count on its PM in difficult situations."
At Flexso, Kim found a work environment where she could fully utilize her own interests and qualities. Also triggered for a place where you can be yourself completely? Meet Flexso!
