Meet ALL4’s Project Management Director, JP Kleinle

Effective project management is essential to ALL4’s success and is the engine of our business. As a growing organization, ALL4 currently has project management roles open in all our offices. Have you wondered what it might be like to join ALL4 and be a project manager? Whether you are someone taking on project management duties for the first time in your career, or are an experienced project manager, ALL4’s Project Management Office (PMO) offers support to both new and seasoned ALL4 staff.  JP Kleinle is our Project Management Director (PMD) and leads the PMO efforts. The PMO serves ALL4’s project manager community with the training and resources needed to continually improve our project management skills across all aspects of the business.  As part of our Operational Excellence (OE) goal, the PMO is tasked with enhancing ALL4’s framework of systems, processes, and procedures used by project managers and business leaders. JP answers three questions about how he supports project managers at ALL4 below.

Q#1 Can you give us a sense of what the PMD does, and what drew you to the role?

JP: In my role as the PMD, I serve as an advocate for team members operating in a project management role at ALL4 with the intent to bring efficiency to our processes and procedures used to manage our client’s projects. Having served as a long-time project manager, I have walked in the shoes of our project managers and have developed good habits and best management practices along the way. I am still a project manager at ALL4 today and continue to have first-hand knowledge of how to implement and optimize our processes and procedures. As a growing organization in an ever-changing world of technology, there is an ongoing need to not only onboard new team members but also to reskill and upskill our project managers. This challenge is exciting and is what drew me to the PMD role. I feel I have skillsets and knowledge to share and can make a positive impact in the careers of others at ALL4.

Q#2 There is a project manager forum. Tell us about the format of this meeting.

JP: Chad Morris, ALL4’s Chief Strategy Officer, helps me lead and moderate the project manager forum. In 2023, we held four foundational meetings and sprinkled in additional meetings throughout the year.

We also have a Microsoft Teams chat where ideas and views on issues or questions can be exchanged among project managers.  The objectives of these forums are to increase collaboration and engagement with our peers, improve communications, and support the PM cohort. During our foundational meetings, we explored topics like sales and growth, client and staff planning, best management practices, and burnout. My favorite forum so far included a role play exercise around having difficult conversations. We plan to have more role play exercises in 2024.

Q#3 For anyone contemplating making the transition into a project manager role either from industry or leveling up as a consultant, what are ways the PMO can walk alongside them to offer support?

JP: Project managers are essential to the long-term sustainable growth of ALL4, and we offer support in a variety of ways. The PMO maintains a comprehensive Project Management Guide that is a compendium of guidance on the key systems and processes that project managers utilize at ALL4. The Guide also communicates ALL4’s set of expectations for managing projects. The PMO (Neal Lebo, Project Management Consultant) administers formal Project Management Onboarding training courses that new project managers attend. The PMO has “boots on the ground,” traveling as a team to our various offices for ongoing learning and development initiatives. We call these in-person events PMO Connections. There are also the PM forums mentioned earlier. We use an idea portal to receive suggestions, concerns about obstacles, and ideas for improvement, which are all used to inform our adjustments to get the desired results both the Company and project managers are looking for. The PMO (Karen Escobar, Project Management Business Partner) recently updated our change management process to cultivate a flexible growth culture. Our change management process includes project manager participation to ensure their voices are heard. The combination of these processes keeps the engagement high, allows the PMO to explore new ideas with the project managers, and is key to a project manager’s development while charting their career path at ALL4.

If you would like to learn more about project management opportunities at ALL4, please visit our Careers Page or contact Anne Vitale at avitale@all4inc.com.