Meet Lisa, who has invested in competence development and it pays off

As a consultant working for Knightec, you are constantly surrounded by a high level of competence of which you can acquire. On our part, we as project managers, have got several forums that have become very important and productive for increasing our qualifications and personal development.

To clarify, you could say that we as project managers at Knightec have got three main forums to acquire support and knowledge.

The first one out is the central initiative. To define the opportunity of development for the project managers. Within the initiative, building blocks, materials and, educational tools have been created, allowing all of us to simulate, practice, and learn everything from presentation techniques and stakeholder analysis to things like communication planning.

I was an active part of this initiative myself last year and it resulted in a successful implementation that has become useful for all. One example is the so-called “Årshjul” (Year wheel), a graphical representation showing an overview for upcoming manager events and educations.

The second forum is the internal network, giving us the ability to brainstorm, exchange ideas, and support each other. We can communicate problems and challenges during our tasks/missions to get help, advice, and input from Knightec employees all over the country.
This knowledge platform is frequently used for sharing information or highlighting specific problems.

This network enables the possibility for all employees to bring ideas or solutions forward when and if a colleague runs into some sort of a problem at a customer site, or just needs some feedback.

I want to point out that these two incentives are proven to be successful to attract, develop and keep qualified personnel, and at the same time they are strengthening the bond between us, Knightec and, the customer. For us employees, it is an amazing feeling of great comfort and security to know that even though you are alone on a mission, Knightec is there to cover your back.

Here in the South region, a third forum has been initiated. It is a regional project manager team, run by our team leader. Knowledge and experiences can be shared within the team on a local basis. Our main tool for communication is the team chat, which favors the ability to go outside each and everyone’s comfort zone and share ideas and inputs.

Part of what was brought out when we started the project management team, was a coaching program. This program is easiest explained as a simple form of mentoring. The more experienced leaders being able to support those new in their role of having external assignments. In the long run, it becomes a win-win situation where the coaches themselves gain confidence and competence. The goal is to implement this kind of workflow in the rest of the Knightec sites in Sweden. Extremely rewarding and fun!

Additionally, we have chosen to implement an individual development staircase available for all project managers. Since earlier, Knightec has a career staircase, but the idea with our implementation is to provide for a more focused way of seeing the career direction each team member is interested in taking in the future.

To summarize, I would like to mention that the best part of being a consultant, is the ability to get out and try different kinds of assignments. From my point of view, I find the option of choices more easily available, as a consultant. In my current role, I am having a better chance to work with tasks at companies that could have been hard to get a job at otherwise.