From in-house PM to consulting PM: What I didn't expect

2026-09-18T00:00:00+00:00

I was a PM. I became a PM at a consultancy. Sounds like the same job.

Spoiler: it is not. 😅

Before consulting, I spent around 10 years as an in-house PM. I was used to being inside the organization. I could talk directly to Marketing or Finance, check a contract myself, or find the right person in leadership when I needed an answer.

I could pull the levers.

Then I joined consulting. Suddenly, the levers were somewhere else.

The moment I realized I wasn’t inside anymore

A client team would say, “We’ll discuss this internally and get back to you.”

And I would think: Wait. You’re going to discuss something… without me? 😂

Or: “We need to request this information from another team.” I couldn’t just message that team myself. I couldn’t chase the answer. I couldn’t make sure the question was understood or that someone was actually going to respond.

There were whole departments I simply didn’t have access to. I couldn’t see the contracts directly. I couldn’t run certain financial analyses myself. I didn’t have direct access to customer research or analytics. I wasn’t part of the conversations happening between departments.

Learning to work differently

And honestly? At first, it was frustrating. I felt slow and a bit powerless. I was used to being able to just go and get things done, and suddenly I couldn’t.

I kept thinking: I would do this so much faster! 😅

But when you can’t just go and get every answer yourself, you have to work differently. You start asking: What do we actually know? What are we missing? What assumptions are we making? Who do we need to involve? What risks are hidden behind the information we have?

The context I was missing

And you start realizing that some of the things you thought were “slowness” actually have context you simply couldn’t see.

An approval that looks unnecessarily slow might need to go through several layers of the organization. A request that takes weeks might be sitting with a team that’s already overloaded with requests from across the company.

When you’re in-house, you often know these things without even thinking about them. You hear the conversations. You know the history. You know who to call. You know what happened six months ago that explains what’s happening today.

As a consultant, you’re not part of that organizational life. And that’s not exclusion. It’s just distance. You are working with the team, but you’re not necessarily inside the team.

That distance was difficult for me at first.

But it also forced me to develop a different muscle: influence.

The muscle I had to develop

I couldn’t always make the decision myself. I had to make a recommendation, explain why I believed it was the right one, and build enough trust that the team would actually consider it. I had to understand who had influence, when to push, and when to step back and let the client own the decision.

I’m still figuring out that last one. 😂

And here’s the funny part: I think I’m much better at influencing now than I was as an in-house PM. Not because I suddenly discovered some magical consulting technique. I simply had to learn it. When you have direct access and authority, you don’t always notice how much those things help you create momentum. Consulting took some of that away. So when someone followed my recommendation, I had to rely much more on trust, reasoning, and how I communicated it.

And I think that changed how I see the PM role itself.

When I stopped doing everything myself

In-house, especially in a fast-moving company, it’s very easy to spend your time running: you have a problem → find someone → get the answer → make the decision → move on.

Consulting gave me more space to stop. To understand the context, map risks, surface gaps, facilitate discussions, challenge assumptions, and help the team make better decisions rather than always making the decision myself.

I also had to learn something else: just because I could do something faster myself doesn’t mean I should.

My biggest takeaway

I joined thinking I would basically do the same job in a different environment. Instead, I lost some of the access and authority I was used to. It was uncomfortable. But losing those levers forced me to become more deliberate about how I create impact.

I used to think that part of being a good PM was being able to make things happen. Now I’m starting to think it’s just as much about helping other people make things happen.

Nine months in, I don’t think I’m the same PM I was when I started 🚀.

Client success starts before kickoff

2026-09-14T00:00:00+00:00

Client success is established long before kickoff, during the work happening in business development and even before the contract is signed.

By the time a project begins, there have already been meetings, follow-ups, internal conversations, and decisions about what the engagement should actually look like. All of that creates context the delivery team eventually inherits.

If that context is clear before kickoff, the project has a much better starting point. Teams shouldn’t spend the first few weeks rebuilding what was already learned during sales or asking the client to explain the same problem again.

Good sales work creates a better starting point

At thoughtbot, we try to carry what we learn during the sales process directly into delivery.

One way we do that is through a dynamic project brief built from the client’s intake form, sales call notes, transcripts, and internal conversations. Instead of treating the handoff as a summary written at the end, the brief evolves as we learn more about the client, their goals, and what they’re trying to solve.

That kind of continuity matters. The 90/10 Rule talks about communication as part of consulting itself, and I think that starts well before an engagement begins.

The team should fit the client, not just the project

We also ask clients how they want to work with us before we put the team together. Our onboarding survey helps us understand things like communication preferences, collaboration style, and what they need from the relationship.

That information helps us think beyond simply matching technical skills to a project. We want to put the right people on the work for that particular client.

And those people matter. thoughtbot’s consultants bring years of experience working across products, teams, and organizations. They’re not just there to execute a list of requirements. They bring judgment, ask questions, challenge assumptions when needed, and help clients make better decisions along the way.

Our internal consulting course goes deeper into how we think about defining success, building trust, and communicating clearly throughout that relationship.

Someone is accountable for the outcome

Once the work begins, we also have Delivery Leads whose role is to help make sure the engagement continues moving toward the outcome the client signed up for.

That creates another layer of continuity between what was discussed during sales and what actually happens during delivery. The goal isn’t just to staff a project and hand it off. It’s to make sure the original goals stay visible as the work evolves.

That connects closely with You’ve hired a consultant developer. Now what?, which talks about the clarity and communication that help consulting engagements start strong.

Success starts before kickoff

This is where I think thoughtbot feels different from a more traditional agency model.

Client success isn’t something we start thinking about once a team has been assigned. We’re collecting context before the contract is signed, carrying that context into onboarding, intentionally putting the right consultants on the work, and keeping someone accountable for the outcome throughout delivery.

By the time kickoff happens, the client shouldn’t feel like they’re starting over with a new team.

The relationship is already underway, the context is already there, and client success should already be in motion.