Project Management Partner

Project Management Partner

We are looking for our next colleague to join us in supporting people and organizations who are changing the world. You will join our small group of operations staff and consultants. We partner primarily with non-profit and public sector clients to strengthen their systems, and themselves. In our work we learn every day, and support each other as a regular practice. Every day we get to work with interesting, smart, mission-driven people and organizations who are changing the world for the better. We start each engagement with respect and maintain that approach throughout every interaction. We are dedicated to noting where and how privilege and thinking patterns have evolved in our shared society’s deep-rooted racial injustice and show up in our work. We keep our focus on impact, and on building clients’ capacity. We are constantly evolving our ability to co-contribute to a more just and equitable local and global community.

We are looking for a person who can be at the center of a portfolio of client projects and “make it work” - someone to be the bridge between our clients’ needs and our services. This is a position for someone skilled at translating client goals into plans for real, tangible results, building decks, tracking budgets, analyzing data. It means understanding both worlds, how to set up and manage a project and communicate well about it. This position will be best filled by a person with previous project management experience. Each Crux engagement requires a strong multicultural awareness, the ability to listen to multiple stakeholders, look ahead, build plans, follow-up, and adapt to changing needs.

Crux has been growing for the last three years. We are adding this Project Management Partner position to our growing team. A few examples of the type of projects you will manage could include strategic planning, team and leadership professional development, or a board of directors evolution or transformations. For a list of our clients – click here: As a Project Management Partner, your responsibilities will include partnering with both the clients and any of the Crux staff working on these projects, managing the overall deliverables, the communication, budget, client relationships, event and technology management and scheduling work. This role also includes partnership with real-time support both onsite and/or remotely via Zoom with clients during retreats or planning meetings. Given the nature of our work in the social sector, this position could include meetings that are scheduled across time-zones outside of the usual Pacific time work hours or occasionally on a weekend.

Our growing and diverse group of clients continue to face challenges courageously, and deserve our respect and the best support we can give them. Crux has grown our client base each year, expanding into different sectors, continually learning together. We need you to bring your experience, energy, and insights to this work. Come join us in our work in developing strategies, facilitating system-level conversations, building interactive and engaging ways for leaders to grow the skills, teamwork and leadership they need for their mission-oriented work in our local, national and global community. We’ve been doing consulting work with an understanding of intersectionality, power, privilege and systemic challenges for over 20 years now, and continue to learn and grow with each interaction. Join Crux, and it’s unlikely you’ll be bored!

About Crux

Crux is a group of consultants who work with clients primarily in the public and non-profit sector to strengthen their organizations, strategies, and systems. We help with things like strategic planning, leadership coaching, board retreats, equity-based work within organizations, training, facilitating meetings, and working through internal conflicts or growth challenges. We are a small, woman-owned business, certified by the National LGBTQ Chamber of Commerce, https://nglcc.org/ . We each work remotely primarily, at client sites, and meet together onsite once a week in southeast Seattle. Every year each of our team members participates in directing our annual donations to Environmental organizations of your choice! (https://www.onepercentfortheplanet.org) You can see our Consortium partners and examples of the work we do on our website www.cruxnw.com.

We are a focused on building a healthy, supportive, sane culture – everyone here matters to each other. We believe that physical and mental health are the foundation of all of our resilience, and as such we offer unlimited PTO for sick time, to support family members in illness, to find space for mental health as needed. We provide a generous, fully covered insurance package plus the option for a retirement fund. We believe that each of us learns and grows best as a team. We invest in the growth of every person at Crux and in our Consortium of colleagues - by setting each other up for success and providing learning opportunities across all aspects of our business. If you’re interested in something that Crux works on, then you’ll get to experience it. If you have an area of understanding that we can learn from, we’ll be interested in learning with and from you as well.

Our internal norms include honest communication, respect for each other as human beings, commitment to modeling and forwarding equity and justice in our work, flexibility in process with commitment to high quality deliverables, and always learning. Each of us who works for Crux comes from a different background and brings our own culture and lived experience. We consistently welcome the diversity, wisdom, insight and expression of every member of our team.

About the Role

Project Management

Project Scoping

• Take incoming requests from prospective clients, and work with our consulting team to build a response, including initial estimates of cost, time, and processes.
• Work with the consulting team to make recommendations about accepting new client work, as well as outsourcing portions of the work to Consortium subcontractors.
• Communicate the status of all new business proposals and manage needed follow-up, in partnership with New Business team, including updating the new business tracking following all conversations with consultants or clients where the potential of new work is discussed.

Implementation

• On a weekly basis, proactively monitor and engage with the consulting team to ensure that you are on track to meet or exceed the billable targets for your role. (2024 – 60 hours/month)
• Build a comprehensive plan for each confirmed project. Project plans should be updated, tracking components that are finished, including communication milestones with clients, and should be linked to scoped parameters. Each project plan should serve as a mechanism to bring others up to date on progress in a reliable, understandable visual.
• Drive the timeline and scheduling process for clients on projects where you have an active role, and as requested in support of other complex client scheduling needs.
• Drive project communication with internal colleagues and clients to ensure consistent shared understanding.
• Engage in client meetings - proactively building agendas, taking notes, and sending timely follow-up.
• Be a thought partner with consultants as an extra set of eyes and ears in a client system.
• Be creative, persistent, and proactive – ensure that you get the info you need to accomplish the tasks listed above.

Tracking & Follow-up

• Leverage project management tools to track projects, processes and monitor status.
• Actively update on a weekly basis any Smart Sheet that tracks new business opportunities or other client level data
• Ensure each project is moving forward within budget parameters; provide relevant data to Operations Manager in support of client invoicing and propose solutions when a project is at risk of coming under or over budget.
• Ensure we continue to be on track, useful, and able to adapt to changing situations, contract extensions, requests for work outside of original agreements.
• Provide relevant data to Operations team and Project Management peers to build shared understanding of project status and internal capacity across Crux. Weekly - ensure that all projects you are managing are up to date in the project plans and within scoped parameters.
• Support the continuous improvement of efficient project management processes.

Project Support

• During weekly staff meetings and other interactions with colleagues -actively look for opportunities to provide billable support in service of Crux clients, following up individually after those meetings.
• With your manager, set goals for learning how to support clients in multiple ways, and develop a learning plan to get those skills.
• Actively participate in work with clients, planning meetings, observing system patterns and partnering with consulting team. Examples of this could include sharing feedback with consulting team members, during meetings ask clarifying questions, take notes about other Crux resources that might be useful, be prepared to present information or research, etc.
• Summarize documents provided by client during project launch/discovery phase to efficiently support consultant onboarding to new projects.
• Conduct online and interview-based research on behalf of clients, analyze the results, and present them to clients in useful ways.
• Support online and in person meeting facilitations – preparing materials and presentations, running slide presentations, setting up breakout rooms, keeping time, etc.

Team and Operational Support –

• Cross train on operational tasks in order to be able to provide back up when needed
• Be prepared to support colleagues are when they are overloaded or in a busy crunch time and make yourself available as possible to be a support/help with tasks
• Participate in the logistics necessary for team meetings, lunches, events as requested or as you see that you could add value
• Contribute to knowledge management processes, sharing information, maintaining internal documents and tools in a way that others can access them
• Be open to requests from other colleagues for help on projects as a regular part of work, and engage within the capacity of your work schedule.
• Identify when you need help and ask for it with enough time for people to be able to respond within their own schedules. You can use the outlook schedule to see when people may be available.
• Cover for colleagues when they are out on sick or vacation time / ask for help covering when you are out on sick or vacation time

In a small business working in the social sector, means everyone adapts and pitches in. Our client requests and our life challenges arrive in ebbs and flows and it’s important that we all are supportive team members by backing each other up.