The Business Cost of Overloading Your Best Project Managers

Galen Low: In some ways, project managers are taking on more stress than ever. They're being asked to lead more strategic projects with higher stakes and greater ambiguity, and also an increasingly revolving door of project team members and executive sponsors alike. But even though many might say that just comes with the territory, it does beg the question: what's at stake if teams of PMs are operating at the edge of burnout when they're the ones at the helm of some of your business's most strategic, most transformative, and most high-profile initiatives?

And also, is it maybe possible that PMs could deliver even more value if their roles were better aligned to their capacity? To dive into that topic, I've brought in a deeply experienced healthcare project professional and PM community leader who has made it her mission to help teams of PMs find balance, increase their impact, and create sustainable careers.

We'll be stepping through her framework for sustainable performance and also putting it to the test to see if it's actually feasible for PM teams to be more effective and experience less stress. Hope you enjoy the episode.

Welcome to the Digital Project Manager Podcast—the show that helps delivery leaders work smarter, deliver smoother, and lead their teams with confidence in the age of AI. I'm Galen, and every week we dive into real-world strategies, emerging trends, proven frameworks, and the occasional war story from the project front lines. Whether you're steering massive transformation projects, wrangling AI workflows, or just trying to keep the chaos under control, you're in the right place.

And if you've been liking what you've been hearing from us lately, please consider following us wherever you're finding us and maybe even leaving us a review. All right, let's get into it.

With me today is Natalie Berkiw-Scenna, founder of Project Management Life and creator of the Sustainable Performance Framework.

Natalie has been consulting, supporting, educating, and coaching around project management, process improvement, strategic planning, meeting facilitation, and even health and wellbeing. Most of her work has focused on the healthcare field, and to this day, she is supporting a large hospital system in Michigan in a lead project consulting role.

Her online community, Project Management Life, helps ambitious project managers find balance both personally and professionally through their online events, their weekly newsletter, and their educational content.

Natalie, thank you for joining me today.

Natalie Berkiw-Scenna: Thanks so much for having me, Galen. I'm ex- super excited to be here with your community.

Galen Low: I have to say, you ship an amazing newsletter. It goes out every week, I think. It's like it's very frequent, and it's very full, and it's very valuable. So I just wanted to say, A, thank you. I'm sure it's not easy to put that all together. I appreciate that. And B, everyone who hasn't checked it out should at the Project Management Life.

Natalie Berkiw-Scenna: Yeah, I appreciate that. We do have a weekly newsletter. It goes out every Tuesday. And because Project Management Life really is looking at the human side of project management, we have multiple articles every single week. So we have one on project management, we have one on career and/or personal branding, and we have one on wellness every, every week.

So, so we always try to make it as full as possible and really as well-rounded as we can.

Galen Low: I thought maybe I'd just start by hitting you with, you know, a bit of a spicy question that my listeners would love to get your take on. But then I wanted to use that just as the lens to look at three different things.

First, I just wanted to explore the reasons why PMs are more susceptible to stress in the current climate and how that impacts business outcomes. Then I wanted to just get your take on how leaders of project management teams, whether they are, you know, enterprise PMO leads or heads of deliveries or, you know, directors of client service or otherwise, how can they help their teams develop skills to manage increased stress?

And then lastly, I'd love to get your perspective on what an optimistic future looks like where PMs almost never take on too much and m- maybe never burn out, and what we'd need to do today to get there. How does that sound to you?

Natalie Berkiw-Scenna: Yeah, that's great.

Galen Low: Everybody is stressed because of the economy, because of AI, because of rapidly evolving role expectations, because of workforce transformation at large.

What is it that gives project managers the right to say they experience any more stress than their non-project management- colleagues.

Natalie Berkiw-Scenna: So let me just back up and just, first of all, stress is something that has become very, very typical, regardless of what environment you're in, what industry you're in, what role you're in.

I see stress. Because I work in, in a, a hospital environment, I actually see what stress does to your body. Over time, repeatedly, unfortunately, it, it does have impacts to your health. Now, project managers are in a pretty unique role. When we are managing a project, we tend to become the face of that project.

Regardless of when something goes wrong, when a stakeholder has a change of scope, when they're upset about something, when a team member is ... needs coaching, when there's team member conflict, whatever that is, guess who gets to deal with that, right? They come right to the project manager. They tend to be the face of that project.

And so we kind of live in a world where we have to try to keep everyone satisfied, everyone happy. We have to keep all of our stakeholders in the loop. We're constantly communicating. We are the central force, if you will, that's driving project work forward. How many of you have had, you know, the number of emails that come through?

Now we have to deal with chat messages. Now we have to deal with, you know, add urgent fires that are constantly coming at us because something went wrong, or something was miscommunicated, or something was misunderstood. And if you don't have the internal skills or the external factors to support you, then it's very easy to get more and more and more stressed, get to a point of overwhelm, and then ultimately hit a point of burnout.

And I see that really frequently in our industry, in our field Project managers, I would love for them to have long, sustainable careers, and I often see PMs that get to a point where they're just so stressed and so burned out, and it could be cultural environmental factors, could be a variety of different reasons, but they get to a point where they're like, "I just don't wanna do this anymore."

I've had my own burnout story. It has shifted the way I think about stress, the way I think about my work but it... sometimes it takes that, that moment in your life to hit that point to realize that stress isn't normal. We can't s- we, we have to stop normalizing it, right?

Galen Low: There's so much that I love in there.

I like even the explanation that, you know, we're the face of the project both ways in a lot of cases, right? Project team that we don't have necessarily formal authority over, and stakeholders who are, you know, don't know that each other exists and are flooding our inbox, and we're this conduit, right?

We're this conduit where and usually alone, everything sort of narrows and the inbox fills up, and it's like in order for anything else to happen, we need to deal with the thing, whether it came in via Slack, whether it's a Jira ticket, whether it's an email, and yeah, that's sort of where that pressure comes from.

But I think the, the other thing you said, that normalization of the stress even when I encountered your brand, I was like, "Yeah, the project management life. I know what that means." It means imbalance. It, it means, you know, high octane. It means hectic, high pressure. And then I, I sort of, you know, I, I, I dug into it, and of course it's about, yes, how can we make that phrase, the project management life, you know, the life of a project manager, how can we make that connote something that is not imbalance and toxicity and chaos?

You know what I mean? I think we, you know, the, the type of stress that we we encounter and endure is a bit different, right? It's a little bit different than folks who are, you know, working on a team with others like them, or managers who have authority over their team but are only working with, you know, people that they've worked with before and know, and who, you know, they do performance management with and one-on-ones with.

It's a bit of a sort of different thing. I wanted to zoom out a little bit because you touched on something. You t- you were talking about your burnout story and, you know, throughout the time I've known you, you've always sort of like kept a toe in the healthcare world even as you've grown this community of project managers, this brand, and you're always doing something.

But I wanted to come back to that interest in health and wellness. What makes project management or project manager health and wellness so important to you personally, and what problems did you find so important to solve that made you decide to build a community around it?

Natalie Berkiw-Scenna: Well, maybe I can share my story if you don't mind.

I'm gonna-

Galen Low: Absolutely.

Natalie Berkiw-Scenna: I would love that ... I'm gonna take you back, Probably about maybe 12 years from now, 12 years ago. And so at the time, I was working, again, in a hospital system. I've spent my entire career in healthcare. In my project management office, my PMO, I was the most senior PM of my team, and of course, with any industry, but healthcare specifically, patients' lives are on the line.

We've got, you know... So projects can be incredibly rewarding, but they can also be very stressful, and a lot of times when things go wrong, and this was the case back, back when I was there, things would go, sometimes go sideways, and at, at no fault of anyone. It's just, you know, some things are out of our control or competing priorities or whatever that might be.

But all of those challenging projects always came to me. That gave me some sense of pride, right? They need me. I felt, I felt needed. Saying no was just, you know, or saying, "I just don't have the capacity" wasn't something in my vocabulary at the time really, right? And so I got to a point where I was literally working pretty much almost every single evening all the way through to about 10:30, 11 at night, go straight to bed, only to then go back to work in the morning, and then st- do, do it all over again, and then still have my weekends where I felt I needed to catch up.

I had no time for friends. I had no time for family. It was work, work, work, and it builds slowly. Here's the thing about stress and burnout. We don't know we're in that mode until it's too late. Here's the thing. Project managers have a lot of cognitive load, too, right? We h- we have constant things going on in our mind.

So even when the laptop was closed or I wasn't answering stuff on my phone, I was lying in bed thinking about it. So I made some big changes in my life. I ended up eventually transitioning to another role. It was a similar role, exactly the same, but it was in a, in a new environment, and I was coming with a fresh perspective.

I'm going to set ground rules you know, right away in terms of I'm, I'm not gonna work till 11:30 at night. I'm, I'm change, I'm changing my ways. Here's the thing. Our environments aren't going to change. Our culture and our, our work environments are not going to change. It's truly up to us to make that internal decision that I'm going to set boundaries.

I'm going to monitor my capacity and know when I get to a stage of burnout. This is one of the reasons that... And just being in the healthcare environment in general for 25 years now is just something I'm incredibly passionate about. And so when I've seen all of my project management colleagues and peers, not just locally, but globally, talk about stress, and I've talked to thousands of PMs, it became very obvious to me that this was something that is missing, that it's, it's not within the project management conversation.

We talk about training. We talk about certification. We talk about, like, how do I get to my next level? But with that- comes increased potential stress. So how do we do that in a way that's sustainable and we absolutely love our careers at the end of the day?

Galen Low: The sustainability thing is like it really resonates with me because, you know, and I think this is true of your community and definitely in mine as well, Yeah, we have, you know, the like, our, our petty grievances about the job, but we also love the job.

And as you're saying that, I'm like, "Oh my gosh, yeah," like I don't know, yeah, I know a few people who are like, "And then I got tired of project management, and I decided to do something else." When they do, often they do something completely different. But more, more commonly, I hear people who are like, "I just couldn't do it anymore," you know?

"It was not sustainable, but if it could be, I would gladly continue doing it." You mentioned you made a, a big change. You had to sort of step away from that organization and that role and that reputation you had built for yourself, probably dragging yourself kicking and screaming. Immediately set up behaviors around, you know, setting clear boundaries and, you know, what, what you value and what you're willing to do and not willing to do.

I'm curious what your first experience was when you had set those boundaries and enacted them, and you're like, "Actually, no, I'm, you know, I'm not going to do this thing," or, "If you want me to do this thing, I, you know, I, I, I, I can't do this other thing." What was the like external reaction to that at that new place?

Natalie Berkiw-Scenna: I wanna say it wasn't that obvious. The reality is I am probably incredibly flexible. And, and flexibility and nimbleness is something that's really important in project management. But one of the things that I made it very clear is, you know, at the end of the day, I'm not responding to messages at 8:00 at night.

Work isn't going to get done in the evenings. So if someone messages you, there is very valid reason for you to respond at 8:00 in the morning versus 8:00 at night, right? So it's, it's giving yourself the ability to set when people have access to you and not making yourself 100% availab- available. If someone messaged you at 3:00 in the morning, would you respond?

Probably not, right? So you have ... Everyone has limits, but the reality is, is what are realistic limits? When I made the move, it was also because I had met my husband and I was transitioning. It wasn't purely like I'm so exhausted of, in this environment that I need to change. I loved where I was working. I truly, truly loved it.

But burnout was just part of my story, right? It's, it was just a reality. But it gave me the opportunity, and I know not everyone has that opportunity. You can't just pick up and go somewhere else and be like, "Okay, now I'm gonna set boundaries." It's the small stuff, right? Boundary setting and, and supporting a, a sustainable career comes from little intentional changes that you, everyone can start making.

So when I think about things like the constant chat messages, when you are doing deep focused work, because we all need to, right? We all need time to build out our project plans or update our status reports or those types of things. If we're trying to do that while our chat messages are going The reality is it's you might type a sentence and then you're responding to a message, and then you get three sentences in, and then you're typing a message.

That constant context switching that we allow ourselves to do, that is where we have the ability, for example, turn off your notifications for 20 minutes. The world, it won't fall apart. Somebody will still be able to get ahold of you. You will still respond. By the end of the day, you have your to-do list, and you actually didn't accomplish anything on that, right?

It is up to us to truly make those small little changes.

Galen Low: I wonder if we can take this opportunity to flip it around, because you said something interesting earlier. You said okay, project managers, we're always talking about certifications and training. You know, yes, it is, you know, entering more, right?

The sort of you know, empathy and stress management and things like that. On the flip side, I... everyone I talk to kind of, is in the dialogue about stress management. Th- they're getting more pushback from the business side. Work culture is kind of like, yeah, okay, yeah, you manage your stress.

That's a bit like she-she. That's a you thing. I don't need to think of that as a business leader. You manage your own stress. You set your own boundaries. You know? Natalie says, it's up to you. But I don't think that a lot of people in that side of the conversation understand the impact or what's at stake or what the risks are of having a team of project managers.

And like you said, th- they're not like... There doesn't, there's not a lot of runway of burnout alert, right? It's not oh, that person is on stage one of burnout. We've got about eight months. Let's like, you know, keep working them really hard until the six-month mark, and then let's, you know, see if they would like some stress leave.

It's a, it's a sudden thing. It happens a lot. And then in my world I'm a, you know, I'm a digital guy. We always say we often say, you know, "No one's gonna die if we don't deliver the thing." In your world- It's not true. Like in the healthcare world, someone could die if you didn't deliver a thing.

What is the business risk of having a team of project managers that are pushing themselves beyond their physical capability? And then conversely, like what is the business value or benefit of having a team of PMs who have developed the skills that you're talking about, the skills and the culture to prioritize balance in their lives?

Natalie Berkiw-Scenna: Yeah. I love that question. We'll always be asked to do more, and that is... That's understandable, because businesses are moving quickly. The, the business world is constantly evolving and, and, and just trying to grow strategically, and project managers are the ones that make things happen. So there will always be more work that comes our way.

But we do need to think about trade-off conversations. The reality is we all only have so many hours in the day and so much mental capacity and energy. The one thing that is up to us as a project manager is to recognize when we're being asked to take on something in addition to the workload that we already have, and if our workload is already at capacity, to have the open dialogue and conversation around trade-offs and say something like, "I can take this on, but it's going to impact the timeline of X, Y."

Or, "I, you know, I don't have the capacity to take it on this week, but I will have some availability next week, so does that work with your timeframe?" Or, "I don't have the capacity to take that on, but can I help you find somebody that can?" We want our stakeholders to be happy. That is, that's our role, right?

So, so saying no is never something that we take lightly, but... And it's not always no, but it's maybe no, but not right now. Now let's flip the switch and talk a little bit about from a business perspective. Imagine having a team that's completely burned out and no longer producing high-quality results, and them giving you your, their best to the projects that you've assigned them to.

When a project manager gets to a point of stress and burnout, you're making mistakes. You are... When you're stressed, you're probably more irritable. You might be more impatient with your stakeholders, especially when something goes wrong. You are the face of, of the project. And so you want to always be able to bring your best self to your projects and really be able to help the organization drive their strategic priorities.

If you are not in your best shape, y- how do you do that? The organizations ultimately flourish when their PMs are in their best state. These are small, realistic changes, right? These are thinking about this from a sustainable performance perspective, and this is where Project Management Life, we're really passionate about this, is, and so we've built out the sustainable performance framework. Business leaders can support their teams by making sure that they're skilled up, not just in the latest certification, whether it's agile, whether it's hybrid, whether it's AI, whether it's... They also need to be able to support their ability to manage their attention and focus, to manage based on their energy, to manage to their capacity, and also to set appropriate and healthy boundaries.

I remember the days in my early days where it w- it was all about I need to manage my scope, I need to manage my budget, and I managed to manage my timeline, right? It was those, it was the three-legged stool that I remember PMI used to talk about. We are in a very different place today. Business need has evolved.

We now need to have business acumen. We now need to be we are often strategic business partners within organizations in many cases. We're in that stage now where we never used to be. So the needs and the demands on us continues to evolve and get get more and more challenging, right? We, we have more weight on our shoulders than we ever did before.

If organizations are going to ask more of their project managers and expect really, really great work. They also are going to get their best return on investment by supporting those project managers to have sustainable performance.

Galen Low: The sustainability thing, you made me realize, like I did it just then even you know, a few minutes ago.

I was like, you know, "Oh yeah, this person will take stress leave, and then they'll be fine and come back, and then we'll just grind them to the ground again." The sustainability bit is the opposite. I come from a film background, so you know, on, on, on film sets, I don't know if it's still like this, I don't know if this is unique to me, but for the folks that I met working in film, it was like grind, grind, grind for whatever, 10, 12, 18 months, and then take six months off, and then, do it all over again.

So like that's kinda the example I had seen, and I was like, "Well, wouldn't that be nice?" And I was like, "Oh my gosh, actually project management's not like that. It's mostly just like grind, grind, grind. Don't take time off." But the answer is not, hey, take... Like then you have to find a way to take a bunch of time off and you know, gather yourself.

It should be day over day, the culture, the sort of behaviors of a project manager, and the support systems around them to be balanced always and not just you know, tip the scale over and then, you know, tilt it back up again and then tip it over again.

Natalie Berkiw-Scenna: Imagine not having to worry about, organizations not worrying about their team members having to take stress leave, right?

Stress often reduces your immune system, makes you more susceptible to things, makes you more susceptible to things like heart disease and those types of things over the long term. You don't wanna worry about sick leave. That, that should just, or stress leave, that should just not even be part of the equation if we're doing this well, if we are setting them up for success by giving them the conditions to be able to say, "I can't take this on right now, but I can take that next week," and that be okay, right?

We all, just as humans in general, we are influenced by our circadian rhythm, right? We've all heard of that. We're based on a 24-hour clock, and it's all based on light and dark. It's a natural process that our body goes through. We have different levels of energy that ebbs and flows throughout the day.

One of the things that we tend to try to do is cram all the important stuff at the end of the day when we are the most exhausted and we're at our lowest energy. This is impacted, could be impacted by sleep, could be impacted by medications and a number, number of other things, but we are at our highest mental clarity in the morning, kind of late morning.

11 o'clock-ish or so, give or take, is when we do our best work. And if we are stuck in a meeting or we are responding to emails or responding to those urgent chat messages that truly aren't- urgent. They might just be more informational, but we feel we need to respond to them. We are draining that really, really fantastic mental clarity on things that may not be the most important.

Can we think about how do we book deep focused work, build an hour or whatever that is into our calendar when we know we're at our highest mental clarity, and we can knock stuff out. And then at the end of the day, we're doing those operational administrative tasks. And then at the end of the day, we actually feel like we've accomplished something, versus try to do something really strategic, build out a project plan, or try to do something innovative, or hold a brainstorming session at 3:00 in the afternoon when we're all yawning and we all need coffee and caffeine.

And things will naturally take longer because we're not at that peak mental energy. Organizations can support team members to do that, to say "Let's, let's, let's look at your calendar and block an hour, and we will protect that time." Book that time and protect it fiercely as if it's a meeting. Like you wouldn't, you wouldn't respond to chat messages and respond to emails if you were in a one-on-one meeting, right?

Act like it's a one-on-one meeting where you are respecting your time just as you would respect the person that you were in a meeting with. Like imagine at the end of the day, you look at your list and you've got five critical things like knocked off the board, right? Your stress level immediately decreased for the evening.

Maybe you can sleep better that night because you're not thinking, "I didn't get anything done, and now I have meetings all day tomorrow," and right? It just, it builds and builds and builds. So organizations just need to be thinking about how, again, how can I set my team up for success? Because ultimately it supports the organization's strategic and operational goals because they have team members that are fit.

They are, they're at their best mental clarity. They are ... They're bringing their A-game, right? And that's what we want. We want project managers to love what they're doing and bring their A-game regularly.

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I feel like we- we're getting into the framework, but I wanted to give you an opportunity to kind of introduce it, because you've developed this framework, it's called the Sustainable Performance Framework.

What I would love to know from you is what it's meant to do or how it stands apart maybe from other sort of stress management frameworks, and also who can advocate for it within a business? 'Cause you're talking about some structural business changes. I... Yes, there's the individual bit, but then there's also the support from a business, and my head goes to, okay, well, who, who needs to know about this framework, even if it's not necessarily for them?

Natalie Berkiw-Scenna: So the Sustainable Performance Framework is one of the key programs that Project Management Life is focused on. And so I've definitely alluded to all of these key pieces that are part of the framework. One of the things, though, that's really important to understand is we can't make improvements in one and then not the rest of it, right?

It is truly a an integrated model where we look, again, at attention and focus and think about things like cognitive load, constant context switching. That's that I'm working on something, and then I get a ping, and I'm responding to it. It's, it's that constant back and forth. Or even if you've got multiple projects, let's say you've got meetings back to back to back, but every meeting is about a different project, and you have no time in between, so you are constantly doing that mental switch "Oh gosh, who are the stakeholders in this meeting?

What is this meeting about? 'Cause I'm about to facilitate it." It's that constant change. And then if we have to go back to what we were doing previously, then our brain has to stop, pause, reorient ourselves and then get, try to get back. And every context switch could take us up to 20 minutes to get back to where we were at.

So if you've ever had a chat message and then you forgot what you were working on before, our brains are ... It takes a while for context switching. So add that amount of time up every time we have an interruption. That takes up a significant part of our day that we didn't account for, you know, all of those unexpected interruptions.

Okay. So that's attention and focus, right? That's, that's kind of the first element or pillar, if you will, of the sustainable performance framework. Then there's energy management, intentional energy management, and I, again, alluded to that around how do you take your best hours of the day to do your most strategic work, to do your emotional labor type of work?

That's those difficult conversations you need to have with a stakeholder. That's conflict resolution within your team. That could be, you know, managing a diffic- you know, it could be a, a variety of different things that come up that drain you mentally. How do we organize our work based on our energy level throughout the day.

And I guarantee this is a life changer. The third piece is capacity. It's all about intentional capacity management. So this is understanding that it's not time management. We often talk about hacks around making sure our calendars are well aligned, and you just do that and things go right back to the way that they were before.

We have to understand that 60 minutes, for example, at 11:00 AM, and 60 minutes at 3:00 PM, they're the same amount of time, but that doesn't mean we have the same amount of mental clarity or the energy or the capacity to get the same level of work done. And so when we're having more and more work piled onto us, we have to recognize that just because I...

somebody sees that I have two hours in my calendar free, that, oh, Natalie can take care of that because she's got time on her calendar available. That doesn't mean I'm at the best mental clarity or mental space to actually bring my best work to whatever that new task is. So it's all about capacity management.

And then the final one, again, we've talked about, is boundary setting, and it's healthy boundary setting. And again, it's not putting guardrails around everything, but it's, it is emotional boundaries. So one of the things, for example, we often, because we are involved in everything and all of our stakeholders, and we build relationships, when things go wrong, we often take internally, right?

We, we take on a lot of the emotional stress. How do we have empathy for what's going on, but not necessarily internalize it? Boundaries could be around our availability, right? We, again, this is going back to the 8:00 PM email or chat message that we feel we have to respond to. One of the things that we talk about is setting availability, like boundaries as well.

So if it's an urgent request, an urgent chat message, I'm going to respond within 30 minutes If it's, or, or whatever that might be. If it's an, an important one but it's not urgent, I'm going to respond within maybe four hours. If it's informational, I'm gonna respond by the end of the day or by tomorrow or something like that, right?

And that's pers- it's everyone will come up with their own reasonable response expectations. We have an entire set of, of strategies and all built within this framework, so I'm super excited about it. I've lived and breathed this myself, and now, like you mentioned, I work full-time at a h- hospital environment, and I run Project Management Life.

I don't feel burned out. I feel, I feel rejuvenated because I know how to manage my energy. I know how to restore that energy and sleep well at night without the waking up at 3:00 in the morning thinking about, "I didn't get that email done." And I've been working with so many organizations and teams, and we've been implementing this.

We've h- been holding retreats and the responses that I've been getting is people are like, "A lot of this is common sense, but I don't think about it. Because I'm so busy, I don't have the ability." So for an organization to actually have that level of training and support within their teams to, for them to be thinking about, "How do I bring my A game?"

and not burn out in the process, right? It's life-changing. It's life-changing for those project managers.

Galen Low: I love that. There's two things that really stood out to me in that. One, you said it's like this ecosystem, like you can't have one thing without another. All of it has to sort of push in the same direction, and I think that's where a lot of us fall down because we hear it as "Oh yeah, like Natalie's talking about like calendar blocking.

Like I've been doing that." But they haven't been doing some of the other things like understanding their capacity or understanding their energy, or maybe they understand their energy but not their capacity, and it's like all of that needs to come up. And the second thing I really love about it is exactly what you said about like it, it is as much organizational change or team culture change as it is individual change, and what you just explained to me was that like, yes, it's gonna be different for different people.

That's part of the point. But also we can create, you know, as team leaders or as leaders within our organization, we can create the sort of scaffolding around this framework to sort of, create sustainable performance from that team, arguably other teams as well, but we can't just hand them a book and expect them to read it and then change overnight.

Like we need to create these circumstances and we need to put in the time to, you know, have a retreat. But it... Like what you're talking about is not like very like abstract things, like there's a practicality to it. I was wondering if maybe we could put that into like a real world scenario. We've been talking about some all throughout, but I just kinda wanna walk through like what that framework looks like, all those pieces together in a scenario that would be familiar with people.

And actually maybe the scenario we use is that idea, right, that we've been talking about where, you know, a project manager is being or feeling pressured to take on more, maybe, you know, saying yes to an extra project or accepting like a last-minute meeting that happens during daycare pickup. Can you like walk me through like the steps and how the framework would be applied in that scenario of "We need you to take on more. Can you take on more?"

Natalie Berkiw-Scenna: Yeah. In a real life scenario, that project manager would simply say, "Let me just check my c- my capacity, and I will get back to you shortly," right? And it doesn't have to necessarily... It could be five minutes later. It's just getting in the routine of saying, "Let me check my capacity to see how I can effectively take that on."

without getting to a stage where I, I'm no longer effective and I'm not bringing my best work to, to, to my projects. You mentioned can you, can you jump on this meeting when you've gotta go pick up for daycare or something like that? The reality is, is we have to also realize that we have lives outside of the office, and I know sometimes that can be challenging, and sometimes that can compete with things that are just part of our, our work lives, right?

It's gonna depend o- in that particular scenario, it's gonna depend on the situation. Do you have a spouse that can do pickup? Do you have, you know, or, or, or do they have aftercare or something like that that you can, can leverage? Or I can't attend, but can we record the meeting and I'm happy to get caught up first thing tomorrow morning, and I will be happy to support any follow-up work that needs to happen, right?

If you're being asked to join a meeting at the very last minute, the likelihood is you're not being asked to facilitate the meeting. You're being asked to be there to listen or to maybe offer some insight, and you can do that post. I, I don't wanna say that's part of the sustainable performance framework, but it's part of the mindset.

So a- again, it's... This is all m- there's a lot of mindset shifts here within within this framework. So even things like we are, we have so many priorities. Everything becomes a priority in most organizations, right? One of the things that they struggle with is to say, "This is, this is the organization's priority, and everything else is important, but it's not the highest priority," right?

A lot of times, organizations will say, "This is the new priority, and this is the new priority, and this is the new priority." And, and when everything becomes the priority, project managers struggle to say, "Where do I guide my attention? Where do I navigate my resources to best support what needs to happen?"

And so it's, it's being ... It's having the mindset to say, "I need to have the conversations with my leaders, with my champions, with my sponsors, my steering committees," whoever that might be, to say, "We need to truly prioritize because we have so many competing priorities." It's a lot of mindset shifts that I think are really, really important.

We have to truly think about this holistically and realize that stress will always be part of our world. The sustainable performance framework is not meant to eliminate stress, but while we make incremental improvements over time, the reality is we'll always have busy periods where, yes, you may feel more stressed, and that's normal.

When that becomes normal all year round, that's where things become challenging. It's when it's seasonal or cyclical and you've got that busy period, but it's followed by some rest and recovery. You know, that is something that we talk a lot about in the sustainable performance framework as well, is we have to build in those recovery periods.

Now, that doesn't mean, again, not taking vacation. I'm not taking stress leave. But maybe I've got a slower day after an implementation or I, you know, may have, maybe have got a, a busy day where I literally have eight hours of meetings, and I've been plenty of, have, have had plenty of those days. But the next day, I've got time blocked to actually do follow-up and, and recover a little bit from that chaos of that constant context switching and cognitive load, and I'm able to get all of my thoughts organized and respond to emails and do those things that are our higher priority and feel like I've had a, a bit of a breather, right?

When we change that mindset that it can- it's not just go, go, go, go, go and that's normal And it's how can I sustain my performance over the long term so I have a, again, longevity in my career as a project manager, and I come to work loving what I do every day?

Galen Low: I like that. And I like the word holistic too, because, you know, you could easily take that scenario and take it up a level, or take it up four levels, right?

You know, as in some ways, you know, business culture is also reactive and panicky. But just even to have that moment to be like, "Well, listen, let me check the team's capacity. I wanna make sure that we can be effective for you, that the, the result that we're doing for this is gonna be high quality."

That's a conversation that almost anyone can have at almost any level. But we've normalized this idea of "Okay, I'm the decision maker, so... And this is business, so we say yes to every opportunity, and then we figure it out." I've worked in a lot of those organizations. I understand why, right? But this holistic change of framework can also...

You know, it benefits the business, it benefits the teams, it benefits the individuals. But yeah, it can't just be sort of one individual who decides to do this necessarily. It's much more impactful if a team does this with an ecosystem that also supports it.

I wanted to talk about the future, because you, you mentioned normalization, right?

It's like we've spent so many years normalizing the stress culture, hustle culture being overwhelmed, feeling over capacity, letting work bleed into our evenings and impact our, our, our, the rest of our lives. I was wondering if you could just paint an optimistic picture for us of where you see the profession heading.

What does a world look like where most project managers almost never carry more than our share of the stress, and what do we need to start doing today to sort of get there?

Natalie Berkiw-Scenna: One of the things I love is that project management i, in general is a growing field. The level of work that is going to continue to fall on our shoulders is going to continue to increase, especially as organizations see the value that project managers bring.

I think sustainable performance is going to be a critical skill set that will support project managers not just have a, a, again, not a, not a longevity in their career, but for them to continue to be as valued in what we do by businesses, by organizations. We are going to be bringing our best selves, and we're gonna do that through sus- through the skills of sustainable performance.

We'll continue to be greater strategic partners, even more so as time goes on. But I think in order for us to do that and do it well so that we continue to be respected and actually bring our A game, we have to be thinking about not just training and certifications, right? Another PMP is, you know, it's... I, I love that we're all getting certified and, and there's that...

They're building that best practice and standardization, but it's more than that. It is those soft s- some of those soft skills, if you will, that truly aren't soft. They are leadership skills. They're communication skills. They're, There, there's so many other pieces that we have to be mindful of. We have to be able to navigate those difficult conversations.

We have to navigate challenging scenarios and being able to support all of our stakeholders, and the way that we can do that is build the soft skill side of things as well. Those interpersonal skills are really, really critical, and that's where sustainable performance falls. It falls in that interpersonal skill bucket, and I really see that for us to be able to not just grow in this profession, but compete in an ever-growing com- you know, competitive space, we have to bring our A game in the interpersonal, because we're all becoming very, very standardized in the technical side.

So it's, it's this side that really lets us shine.

Galen Low: Yeah. And you know what I love about it? Is that our self-perception as project managers is like cat herders. And what you just said is that the profession is growing for us to become strategic leaders that are driving businesses forward, that are driving transformation, and there's all this middle ground in between for us to almost grow up into that.

And to your point, it's not better Gantt charts. It's gonna be the interpersonal stuff. It's gonna be our ability to manage our own capacity. It's gonna be our ability to set our own boundaries. And at the business level, too, there is strategic importance to taking care of this profession, people in this profession within that organization who are driving change forward, who are driving strategic initiatives, who are, you know, at the executive table, at least, you know, present there in the conversation.

And yeah, being the conduit, being the face of a project, but not a cat herder anymore. We've been, like, kneecapping ourselves for a while now, and that's why there's this big sort of normalized gap between how we see ourselves and actually the impact that we have. You said it at the beginning, right? It's like people are asking us to do stuff because we're important.

We are people pleasers, so we say, "Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes," but nobody wants us to tip over. Nobody sees it as that you know, "Okay, well, I'll just keep feeding this to Natalie until she tips over." That's not the game. The game is, wow, this person is getting things done. You've built a reputation for yourself of taking on really high-stress projects that need rescuing.

That was your brand. And they're like, "That's great."

Natalie Berkiw-Scenna: I love that you just... I'm just gonna add to that really quickly. I love that you talked about reputation, right? Our reputation's really important, and, and that's kind of one area PML talks a lot about, is personal branding and building your reputation and being able to share the value that you truly bring.

And so For us to continue to do that good work, which we all want to do, we just have to make sure we have everything set in place that we will continue to be successful without getting to that point of burnout and stress, and be able to continue to deliver amazing project results.

Galen Low: I love that. Natalie, this has been so much fun.

Just for even more fun, do you have a question that you wanna ask me?

Natalie Berkiw-Scenna: Yeah, I do.

Galen Low: Rawr, rawr.

Natalie Berkiw-Scenna: You mentioned earlier about your midnight emails and stuff like that. Tell me a little bit about your stress story. What's... You know, and what did you learn from it? Where did w- where- how did you make the change?

Galen Low: I mean, I walked into an organization, and like agency life is, you know, normalized high octane work, high pressure y- across the board as far as I can tell. And I walked into an organization where I knew it was, like, project manager heavy. It was project manager led. In other words, we were important.

We were seen as important. We were drivers of business. It was kind of a hybrid role of account management and project management. I, you know, like you, I, I, I felt oh, how I'm valuable is during the day I'm, like, orchestrating, coordinating, communicating, and making sure that people have the answers they need to keep going.

But, like, all the other stuff well, that fits at night 'cause it's not interpersonal. I don't need to be, like, working with someone on it. Status reports and everything like that, and that was all, yeah, after midnight. I thought of myself as a, a high capacity project manager 'cause I can take all these things on.

You know, look at me, and I put my brand on that as well. Did I do anything proactively to change that? I, I don't know if the answer is yes. I do think that I, I had to sit down and think about the value si- the size of the value of things where, you know, maybe not status reports necessarily is not always the best example or at least the most impactful one, but statements of work or a proposal that I was working on.

Yeah, that's gonna make an impact to the business far more than me answering a question of where is this document on the Z drive. Although in my head I was like, "Oh, I'm so valuable. I helped. You know, this person would've taken 15 minutes to find the file on the Z drive. We got it done in two."

I thought that was where my value was. Yeah, I was like, "Yeah, crushed it," you know? But, like, when you think about it, it's not everything is the same size in terms of its impact and its value, and I think I, I, I started having to prioritize that. The energy thing, though, like my chronotype is like whatever, early evening.

Like I think that identified the times in my day where I can do different types of work, but I haven't gone as far. Hearing you talk about making it a system or having a framework around it, I'm like, yeah, that's probably what I needed, probably still need today, because even though I recognize where these time blocks are, I'm not protecting them.

I'm just kind of planning, but I'm still reacting. Where I'm at in my journey is going from managing how I all the reactive stuff to legitimately being proactive about things, and then fitting everything else around it. You know, this, that, whatever the framework or analogy where it's like, yeah, you get the big rocks in there and then you fill it with the gravel around it and the sand around it.

But in that order, 'cause you fill it up with sand, that big boulder's not gonna fit, right? So that big thing that you need to get done that's gonna have a huge impact, it's not gonna get done if your whole, you know, container is full of sand. I'm trying to take that on more. But I'll be honest with you I am y- I still tell people not to be me, you know?

I still answer Slack at night.

Natalie Berkiw-Scenna: Well, a- and, and that's the thing. It's not a one and done, right? It's not implement the sustainable performance framework and then you're, you're golden, right? It's, it is consistent practice. It is, you know, building out a plan for yourself to say you know, "I'm going to regularly do these things.

I'm going to check in with myself on how things are going," and course correct where you need to. But it's n- having the strategies and knowing what they are that are going to improve your s- your, your performance. You have to be constantly working at it. It's something that's, again, not one and done. Just for example with attention and focus, sometimes just having too many Tabs open on your computer can absolutely blow your attention and focus out of the water because if you're working between two tabs, but you have to file through 10 tabs to get what you're needed, and then you get lost like, "Oh, there's my email," and then you start responding to email.

It's, it's regular practice to recognize when you are doing something that is maybe more unsustainable, or you need to just tweak and improve your focus, or improve your boundary setting, or improve your capacity management or, you know, et cetera. I did mention we have retreats, and we do workshops, and corporate training, and speaking engagements, and a number of other things.

So if folks are ever looking for that, that's kind of one of the things that we, we do here at Pr- Project Management Life, and would love to support organizations. If they truly want their project leaders to be... bring their A game all the time regularly, do great work, we're here to support.

Galen Low: I love that.

And actually, you know, as you're saying that, if someone's listening right now, they lead a team of project managers, they want them to become stress resilient, or maybe they're a business leader and they want to, you know, implement some of these frameworks, where, where can they go to find out more about you?

Natalie Berkiw-Scenna: Projectmanagementlife.org. It's super easy to find us. Or you can email us directly at info@projectmanagementlife.org, and we would love to hear from anyone if they're just even interested in learning more about it. Or if they just wanna sign up for our newsletter, you mentioned it at the beginning of the hour, projectmanagementlife.org.

They can find the, the newsletter sign up there. Most of our content is often around sustainable performance, but looking at it from different angles, and we've got lots of great content that we're putting out regularly, so.

Galen Low: Natalie, thank you again so much.

Natalie Berkiw-Scenna: My pleasure. Thanks for inviting me, Galen.

Galen Low: All right, folks. That's it for this episode of Digital Project Manager Podcast. If you enjoyed this conversation, make sure to subscribe wherever you're listening. And if you want even more tactical insights, case studies, and playbooks, create a free account with us at thedigitalprojectmanager.com. Until next time, thanks for listening.