The Business Cost of Overloading Your Best Project Managers

Project managers are being asked to take on more strategic work, navigate competing priorities, and deliver results under increasing pressure. But when being constantly available and stretched too thin becomes the norm, what does that mean for the quality of our work—and the longevity of our careers?In this episode, host Galen Low sits down with Natalie Berkiw-Scenna, founder of Project Management Life and creator of the Sustainable Performance Framework, to explore why burnout is such a persistent challenge in project management and what we can actually do about it. Drawing on her own experience with burnout and 25 years in healthcare, Natalie shares a practical approach to managing attention, energy, capacity, and boundaries. Together, they unpack why sustainable performance isn't just a personal wellness goal—it's a business priority that helps PMs deliver better work without sacrificing themselves in the process.Resources from this episode:Join the Digital Project Manager CommunitySubscribe to the newsletter to get our latest articles and podcastsCheck out this episode’s sponsor: FingerprintConnect with Natalie on LinkedInVisit Project Management Life

Finding the right freelance project manager can feel like searching for a unicorn. Do you hire someone who knows your industry inside out, or someone who can solve the problem in front of you? And if you're a freelance PM looking to branch into a new industry, how do you know which of your skills will actually transfer?In this episode, host Galen Low sits down with Ashanti Johnson, founder of the Freelance PM Club and owner of Strategy House, to unpack what makes a great freelancer-client match. They explore why industry experience isn't always the deciding factor, how to position your expertise around outcomes rather than job titles, and why the future of freelance project management depends on treating independent professionals as strategic partners, not just extra hands.Resources from this episode:Join the Digital Project Manager CommunitySubscribe to the newsletter to get our latest articles and podcastsCheck out this episode’s sponsor: FingerprintConnect with Ashanti on LinkedInVisit The Freelance PM Club

AI is changing how software gets built, but does that mean technical program managers (TPMs) and engineering managers should become one role? Not so fast. As engineering teams move faster with AI, the need to manage dependencies, anticipate risks, and keep cross-functional teams aligned isn't disappearing. It's evolving.In this episode, host Galen Low sits down with Satish Menon, a technical program management and engineering operations leader with experience at Google, Dell, and other major software companies. Together, they explore what technical fluency really means for TPMs, how AI is shifting the value of program management, and why the future of the role depends less on tracking work and more on solving problems, earning trust, and orchestrating delivery at scale.Resources from this episode:Join the Digital Project Manager CommunitySubscribe to the newsletter to get our latest articles and podcastsCheck out this episode’s sponsor: FingerprintConnect with Satish on LinkedIn

AI search is changing discovery, but the playbook isn’t about finding a magic prompt, tag, or shortcut. Matt Slater, founder of Receipts, explains why AEO and GEO still depend on fundamentals: knowing who your brand is for, publishing clear first-party information, and building enough real-world credibility for third-party sources to corroborate what you say about yourself.For project professionals, that shift matters. Stakeholders may want immediate visibility in ChatGPT or Claude, but sustainable results come from consistent, integrated work across brand, content, reputation, and search—not hacks that could disappear with the next update. And as zero-click searches grow, success may increasingly look less like “more traffic” and more like better-informed prospects arriving ready to act.Resources from this episode:Join the Digital Project Manager CommunitySubscribe to the newsletter to get our latest articles and podcastsCheck out this episode’s sponsor: FingerprintConnect with Matt on LinkedInVisit Receipts

AI’s biggest opportunity in professional services may not be replacing expertise—it’s removing the operational drag that keeps experts from using it. In this conversation, Projectworks CEO Mark Orttung explores how AI can take on the neglected or repetitive work around proposals, resource planning, timesheets, invoicing, and forecasting while keeping human judgment firmly in the loop.The bigger shift is moving beyond using AI for isolated tasks and rethinking entire business processes around it. For consulting firms, that means connecting the journey from winning work to staffing it, delivering it profitably, and getting paid—with better data and fewer administrative handoffs along the way.Resources from this episode:Join the Digital Project Manager CommunitySubscribe to the newsletter to get our latest articles and podcastsConnect with Mark on LinkedInVisit  Projectworks

Strategic initiatives rarely stall because teams aren’t working hard enough. More often, the information leaders need to make timely decisions is scattered across Jira, Asana, Slack, spreadsheets, meetings, and everything in between. By the time a risk becomes visible at the executive level, the opportunity to address it early may already be gone.Galen Low sits down with Maria Delgado Oliveros, founder of glidiffy and former program management leader at Uber, Hexagon PPM, and Chime, to unpack what makes strategic initiatives different from ordinary projects—and why better visibility can transform the relationship between program managers and executive sponsors. They explore how PMs can spend less time chasing updates and more time understanding dependencies, surfacing risks, making trade-offs, and becoming trusted operational partners.Resources from this episode:Join the Digital Project Manager CommunitySubscribe to the newsletter to get our latest articles and podcastsCheck out this episode’s sponsor: FingerprintConnect with Maria on LinkedInCheck out glidiffy

Change is no longer something organizations can neatly package into a transformation initiative. It’s constant—and the real challenge is keeping strategy, decisions, and execution connected while everything around the organization keeps moving.Galen Low sits down with Denise Jarvie, Managing Director of Agile Alliance and Director of Agile Community at PMI, to explore what it takes to build change readiness as an organization-wide capability. They dig into why strategic intent gets lost on its way to delivery teams, how leaders can move decision-making closer to the work without creating chaos, and why AI is making human judgment—not just technical execution—an increasingly valuable skill.Resources from this episode:Join the Digital Project Manager CommunitySubscribe to the newsletter to get our latest articles and podcastsConnect with Denise on LinkedInCheck out Project Management Institute (PMI) and Agile Alliance

AI is changing more than how work gets done—it’s changing who gets to make decisions in the first place. And that makes role clarity, decision rights, and organizational design much harder to leave implicit.In this episode, Galen Low talks with Cassie Solomon about why RACI still matters in the age of AI, how it can evolve from a documentation tool into a design tool, and what leaders need to rethink as AI agents take on more work, more judgment, and in some cases, more authority.Resources from this episode:Join the Digital Project Manager CommunitySubscribe to the newsletter to get our latest articles and podcastsConnect with Cassie on LinkedInCheck out The New Group Consulting and Cassie’s book — Leading Successful Change: 8 Keys to Making Change WorkPower and Prediction: The Disruptive Economics of Artificial Intelligence

For many project professionals, the job title that once felt like a marker of progress can eventually start to feel like a box. And with AI disruption, shifting responsibilities, and increasingly blurry career paths, figuring out what comes next means looking beyond the label on your LinkedIn profile.Galen Low sits down with career coach and former project professional James Compton to unpack “career dysmorphia”: the disconnect between a career that looks successful on paper and one that feels draining, flat, or directionless in practice. They explore how to recognize when your professional identity has become too tied to your title, create space to rethink what actually energizes you, and use disruption as an opportunity to rediscover the value and purpose underneath the role.Resources from this episode:Join the Digital Project Manager CommunitySubscribe to the newsletter to get our latest articles and podcastsConnect with James on LinkedInCheck out Limitless Leading and The Career Dysmorphia Dossier

When margins get tight, reducing headcount can look like the fastest route to a healthier balance sheet. But in professional services, there’s a catch: your people aren’t just a cost—they’re a big part of what clients are paying for. Cut too deeply, and the short-term savings can quickly turn into overloaded teams, weaker client service, unwanted attrition, and eventually, the cost of hiring people back.In this episode, Michael Gold and James Leigh explore another path: getting more value from the people you already have. They unpack what it means to “activate” human potential, why AI adoption needs more than a stack of new tools, and how organizations can rethink work around people’s actual strengths instead of forcing everyone into the same job-shaped box. The result is a different way of thinking about efficiency—one that asks how you can grow capability before assuming you need to shrink the team.Resources from this episode:Join the Digital Project Manager CommunitySubscribe to the newsletter to get our latest articles and podcastsConnect with Michael and James on LinkedInCheck out Aria, Gold Strategic Delivery, Vanberra, and Kintara