The Art of Engagement
Balancing the roles of Project Management, Account Management, and Strategy
I’ve often felt conflicted as a Project Manager in a creative agency. So much of traditional project management can feel like the antithesis of creativity and design thinking. In the past, I disliked the demand of the role to interpret my tendency towards organizing and planning as a nag on creatives, or as an order to plan stringently and budget too tightly (often at the expense of my team’s most brilliant aha moments). At times, the constraints of the role even left me feeling like a useless messenger between creatives and Account Managers when I craved input and efficiency as an experienced and constantly involved team member.
Last year, I started working at Craft as an Engagement Manager. I’ve seen this title applied in different ways across organizations and agencies, but at Craft, the role is a fluid and optimized combination of Account Management, Project Management, and Strategy skills. And while this may sound like a lot to balance, these thoughtfully combined efficiencies make this role feel like a long-awaited missing link in my career.
Perhaps most fundamentally rooted in Project Management, Engagement Managers facilitate the agile execution of product design and research, including initiating and facilitating the correct cadence of work and ceremonies. This requires in-depth communication with designers and researchers to understand the activities an engagement will comprise. As an engagement proceeds, this also means keeping the team in step and in full attendance at as many touchpoints as possible (no easy feat between multiple projects and priorities). Documentation, synthesis, context, and communication of relevant resources by an Engagement Manager allow for the team to spend less time digging for foundational information, and more time researching and designing.
Engagement also encompasses the traditional role of Account Management. We customize our communication styles to harmonize with our clients and open our ears to ensure that they feel empowered and involved while guiding them through project ceremonies and spotlighting their business goals and concerns throughout research and design activities.
Embracing the visioning objectives of a Strategy role, an Engagement Manager curates and emphasizes the intention and objective of an engagement. While the entire team should recall this intention, an Engagement Manager has the specific intent of keeping an eye on “the big picture” while the team is freed to deep-dive into the intricacies and inspirations they encounter throughout the journey. As they watch the engagement and product grow, Engagement is also thinking ahead across multiple dimensions to be sustainably growth-focused for our clients’ changing realities and goals.
While it’s not a commonly understood title, Engagement Management is the role that agile product design agencies and firms crave to maintain momentum, encourage productive team collaboration, and continuously look for future opportunities. It’s an evolving practice that happily and humbly learns from the creative, research, and development disciplines around us, and marries client challenges to bespoke design solutions.
