How This Program Manager Took Ownership Beyond Their Role and Transformed a Crisis Into Opportunity

OK, this, this one is a tough one. Something that is outside of my scope, but I still took responsibility for it

OK. So, when I, um, shortly after I joined this project, I was, um, just Like the team lead of the project, um, my main responsibility was just to make sure the project runs properly, um, make sure, um, the client would follow, uh, would be able to like, um, Have Have like improved their user experience and uh one of the main tasks is to make sure they, uh they follow like data integrity and compliance so that they don't receive any like financial, um financial penalties from the auditor. So, one of, uh, because We had, we used to have like a team member who was like responsible for um like all these audit related tasks. Uh, however, um, Just shortly after I joined the project, this person left the team and then, um, the management's goal was to Uh, have this person come back for like auditing, uh, during the auditing period to, so that she can handle all these, um, like audit-related requests to help the client to make sure they don't get fined. However, I see an opportunity, uh, during this time. If I can be the one who's taking care of all these tasks, that means, um, one, I will learn an extra set of skills. I will have another skill under my belt, and two, the team and the managers, uh, would not have to pull a resource from, uh, a resource from another project just to help out, uh, with us on this like specific task. OK. So, um, what So what I did was I, I had a pretty good relation with this uh person. Uh, so then, um, I reached out to her and then, uh, I set up some calls so that she can walk me through like what the process is, um, in order to help me like perform the actual task during the Um, auditing season. So, with, um, she, with like a couple of hours of training, I was able to handle and understand the scope of this auditing uh task and uh lay out what the to do list is for, uh, for the client to make sure we don't get, uh, we don't miss anything. And I also did a mock run in one of the um test environment that we have to see if I fully understand with the uh material that I learned from uh this team, this team member. With, um, like, with some testing and, uh, practice in the test environment, I was fully able to grasp the Um, the process and then without, with very minimal error, which are things that I can correct when the, when it happens in the real world. So what's go ahead, sorry. Oh, yeah, so soon, soon after that, um, When the real audit happened, um, I was able to complete the task, uh, without any errors, and the client and the auditor was satisfied with all the information that we have provided. And uh from this, I, from this opportunity, like I can see that like certain tasks doesn't have to be like done by one person. Um, knowledge can always be transferred to another person. If I take the initiative, um, I can be the one who's doing, um, that task and from this, I also showed the management that I am willing to take on like responsibility, uh, that was That is not assigned to me. So, right now, because of that initiative, I gave a management a good impression. So, right now, um, like I said in the example earlier, um, training was not part of my responsibility before, but I also took on that so that I can help out, um, the team and make sure the project success.

So, um, when I took this, uh, initiative, I, I had a meeting with my manager. I told him that like if we take off, um, that previous person from the other team, that is taking away time from um her working on that project, which potentially would slow down the progress of, uh, slow down the timeline for her project and eventually affect the revenue. But if I take on this task, um, we would be working like outside of like business, like we spend some, some of the lunch time together, like we, we eat together and then uh she was teaching me how, um, what are the step by step. Um, guides for the auditing process. Um, so that we didn't really take up too much of the business time and, uh, did not affect her, uh, performance on the project. And if, and another point that I try to, uh, convince the management is that if I can be the one who will take on this, um, sooner or later, I will be able to train up some team member. Like I wouldn't be the only one who is Having this knowledge and um I want to, like, and I told the management that I want to build a team that everybody would know what each other does. So then um whatever happened to like one of the person, let's say, uh, during the auditing season, I got sick, um, someone else will be replacing me. Um, in situations like, um, that, like not having someone being able to like do that procedure, uh, would never happen. So we won't have to ever like pull resources from another team and potentially just to benefit one project but hurting the other project. So that was the um Uh, like the speech that I gave, we're trying to convince the management to, uh, let me take the initiative.