I didn’t set out to be a project manager. I just kept doing the work.

For a long time, I didn’t think of myself as a project manager.

I was working in start-ups and agencies, first as an editor and later as an account director. My job, at least on paper, was about clients, relationships, and strategy. But the day-to-day reality looked different. I was organizing work, clarifying expectations, negotiating scope, smoothing tension between teams, and making sure decisions actually turned into progress. I didn’t have language for it at the time. I just knew that if I didn’t step in, things would drift, stall, or quietly fall apart.

At some point, that pattern became obvious to other people before it became obvious to me.

The real turning point came when a recruiter reached out about a project management role at Razorfish. I remember the call clearly because I was confused. I had been an account director. I didn’t think of project management as my job. The recruiter walked me through what the role actually entailed, and I still didn’t quite get it. She had to explain it to me again. And then, somewhere in that second explanation, it clicked.

She wasn’t describing a new set of skills. She was describing the work I’d already been doing.

What changed in that moment wasn’t my capability. It was my understanding. There was a name for this kind of work. There was a role built around it. And there were other people who recognized its value enough to center it.

That realization reshaped my career.

The work finds you before the title does

When I talk about "accidental project managers," this is what I mean.

Many people find themselves doing project leadership work long before it’s formally recognized or labeled. In some cases, that begins early in a career. Sometimes it happens after years in another role. Sometimes it happens repeatedly, every time you step into a new project or a new organization.

You become the person people look to when things get unclear. You’re the one asking questions that slow the work down just enough to make it make sense. You’re the one connecting dots between teams who are all moving in good faith but not always in the same direction.

That work doesn’t feel accidental when you’re doing it. It feels necessary.

What often does feel disorienting is realizing how much responsibility you’re carrying without much structure or shared language to support it. You know how to keep things moving, but you don’t always know how to orient yourself when the work changes shape, when you inherit a project midstream, or when expectations outpace authority.

That was true for me even after I had the title.

Having a name for the work matters

Once I stepped into a formal PM role, I didn’t suddenly feel like an expert. What changed was that I finally had a framework for understanding what I’d been doing all along. I could see patterns instead of isolated problems. I could recognize when a project needed stability rather than speed, or clarity rather than more effort.

More importantly, I could stop assuming that everyone else had a clearer map than I did.

That assumption is incredibly common among PMs, especially those who come into the role sideways. You think you’re behind because the work feels heavy. You think you’re missing something because the job doesn’t feel as clean as the job descriptions suggest.

In reality, you’re often responding appropriately to work that’s complex, human, and unfinished.

The problem isn’t that PMs don’t know how to do the job. It’s that we rarely give them tools to understand what kind of situation they’re actually in before asking them to lead.

Why we built the Accidental PM Starter Guide — and what comes next

Across my work as a project manager, consultant, and coach, I’ve had the same conversations with PMs in every kind of environment. People aren’t looking for more tools. They’re trying to make sense of the work in front of them—especially when they inherit projects midstream, carry unspoken responsibility, or navigate conversations that feel heavier than they look on paper.

The Accidental PM Quick Start Guide came out of that reality, and out of my own experience doing this work long before I had language for it. It’s a free, practical entry point designed to help PMs recognize the kind of project leadership they’re already practicing and orient themselves in real situations. It focuses on patterns, judgment, and understanding what a project actually needs before deciding what to do next.

The Accidental PM Starter Kit Playbook is where that thinking goes deeper. Available inside PM Squad, the playbook expands the guide into a complete system of conversations, tools, diagnostic paths, and a 90-day plan. It’s built for PMs who want structure they can return to across different projects, roles, and moments of complexity.

We built PM Squad at Same Team to bring all of this together—guides, blog posts, playbooks, and ongoing practice—into a single ecosystem that reflects how PMs really grow: through experience first, and structure that supports it over time.

Project management has always been human work

Looking back, what stands out most to me isn’t the tools I learned or the processes I adopted. It’s the human judgment that the role kept asking for. Knowing when to push and when to pause. Knowing how to surface disagreement without turning it into conflict. Knowing how to help people make decisions they were avoiding.

Those skills don’t come from a certification. They come from practice, reflection, and often a fair amount of trial and error.

That’s why I care so deeply about naming this work and supporting the people who do it. Project management isn’t a fallback role. It’s a leadership role that many people step into before they realize that’s what they’re doing.

If you’ve ever felt like you became a PM because the work needed someone steady, you’re not imagining things. You were recruited by reality.

If this story sounds familiar

If parts of this resonate, I hope it’s reassuring rather than unsettling. You don’t need to have planned this path for it to be a real one. You don’t need a perfect system to be doing meaningful work.

The Accidental PM Starter Guide exists to help you pause, orient yourself, and lead with more clarity in the middle of that reality. It’s grounded in the same human-centered approach that has shaped my own career, from that first confusing recruiter call to the work I’m doing today.

You didn’t fall into this work by accident. You stepped into it because you were already doing what the work required.

Sometimes, the most important shift is simply recognizing that—and giving yourself the structure to keep going.

TL;DR
Many project managers step into the role before they realize there’s a name for the work they’re doing. That was true for me, and it’s a pattern I’ve seen across roles and industries. The Accidental PM Quick-Start Guide is a free way to help PMs recognize that work, orient themselves in real project situations, and lead with more clarity. PM Squad is where that foundation expands into deeper playbooks, tools, and ongoing practice for PMs who want structure that grows with them.