PM Academy · Onsite #1
Session Recap · All Offices
Five cohorts ran the same Onsite #1, with the same three behaviors and the same exercises. Each room produced a different Ideal PM. This page reports the through-line across the offices and the drawing each room sent forward.
Preparation for Launch
As part of preparation for launch, participants from every office completed a simple inventory to establish expectations for the project manager role, 59 responses in all. Use the widget to review the results: pick any behavior to see where the room stands, read how each band maps to what people chose, and mark your own position today.
Across the Offices
New Orleans ran first, then Orlando, Nashville, Phoenix, and Dallas. Five cohorts worked through the same day and the same exercises. The paper airplane round ran in every room, the 45 cards were sorted, and the same three behaviors surfaced in the language each room chose for itself.
Establishing Clarity
Every room reached the same verdict from the airplane round: teams start folding before anyone asks what “good” means. A checklist states the task, not whether the team read it the same way. Clarity is a conversation held early. Intercept what the pursuit team sold and promised, and challenge anything that does not add up before acting.
Controlling Advancement
Sorting responsibilities across five phases and three streams made pace visible and open to discussion. The shared conclusion: prioritization is the discipline. Choose what not to do, name the risk, and track what it sets off downstream. Speed without clarity reaches the wrong place faster.
Protecting Integrity
When the gaps were tagged process, behavioral, or tool, most landed on behavioral in every cohort. The know-how is already there. The habit is what the program builds. Integrity is closing that gap: holding the work product, the client relationship, the business outcome, and the team together so none of them quietly slips.
The takeaway
Every PM call is a business call. Run the project like a business you own, and manage to balanced targets rather than any single extreme. The firm’s financial health is the sum of how each project gets run.
Every room closed the same way. Each table drew its Ideal PM, then voted one forward. The drawings were an octopus, a conductor, a mountain to climb, a boat in rough seas, a cake held in two hands, and a lighthouse. The same three instincts ran underneath all of them.
The Champions
Each room voted a single Ideal PM forward. These are the five office champions, the field going to the firm-wide vote now that every cohort has run.
The drawing shows six priorities kept in the air at once, in front of a room full of stakeholders. The PM is the calm center keeping every plate aloft without letting one drop.
Timely · Clarity · Effort · Finance · Precise · Open-minded
See the New Orleans recap →
The drawing shows the PM as conductor, with every musician a discipline. The room sounds like music only when someone up front keeps the time.
Control · Coordination · Clarity · Integrity · Accountability
See the Orlando recap →
The drawing shows an uphill climb from open water to the summit. The client ship sets out and the team ropes together across a ridgeline of Grace waypoints, bridging the gaps until the whole crew reaches the top.
Teamwork · Client value · Clarity · Bridging the gaps · Reaching the summit together
See the Nashville recap →
The drawing shows a Grace Studios boat with the PM at the helm and the team on the oars, riding real waves on purpose. The point is steering the crew through rough conditions without losing the client or the ship.
Teamwork · Steady hand · Client & crew · Navigate the storm
See the Phoenix recap →
The drawing shows a Grace PM with heart on display, unfurling the firm’s story, weighing what is right against the dollars, and ready for the calculated leap. The work takes flight and still lands with the numbers to back it. The drawing puts vision, value, and the fine print in one person.
Balance · Value · Calculated risk · Growth
See the Dallas recap →Next: the firm-wide vote. All five offices have run their Kickoff and every champion is in. The whole firm now votes, one person, one vote, for the single drawing that best captures the Grace project manager.
Tell us what landed this week. The survey takes about 3 minutes and shapes what we cover in the live session.