One of the hardest questions to answer when you work for yourself is also one of the simplest: What do you do?
It should be easy. After all, you know what fills your days. You know the kinds of problems people bring you, the projects they hand over, and the work that keeps finding its way back to your desk. But when that work crosses several disciplines and changes shape from one project to the next, finding the right words can be surprisingly difficult.
I’ve been trying to answer that question for more than twenty years.
When I started my business in 2003, I called it Administrative-Pro. At the time, the name made perfect sense to me. Much of my work involved administration, organization, document management, logistical support, project coordination, quality assurance, and the practical details that helped companies function more effectively.
I wasn’t simply completing tasks. I was helping people organize complicated work, improve systems, coordinate teams, and move projects toward completion. The problem wasn’t the work. The problem was how people understood the word administrative.
At one point, someone told me no one would pay an “admin” $75 an hour for document management. He was probably right about the title, but he was wrong about the value of the work. The documents I managed were tied to major projects, quality requirements, procedures, schedules, teams, and client expectations. The work required judgment, organization, technical understanding, and the ability to see how one piece affected everything around it.
Still, language matters. People make assumptions based on titles, and those assumptions shape what they believe a person can do and what the work is worth.
So, I changed the name.
Administrative-Pro became Applied Pro, and I rebuilt the website in about two days. Apparently, rebuilding websites in two days has been one of my recurring professional habits. The new name gave me more room to describe the work I was already doing without forcing it into a category people tended to undervalue.
The work hadn’t changed. The way I described it had.
I Take Pieces and Put Them Together
In 2008, I wrote a blog post called “What Is Applied-Pro?” because I was still trying to explain the company in a way that made sense outside my own head.
At the time, I described myself as a management consultant whose company provided project management services through logistical and coordination support. The website explained that Applied Pro worked alongside existing staff to improve productivity, support company goals, and help management execute strategy successfully.
All of that was true. It was also a lot of words.
The clearest sentence in the entire post was this: I take pieces and put them together.
That’s still one of the best descriptions of my work.
Sometimes the pieces are sections of a federal proposal written by subject-matter experts, managers, partners, and subcontractors across several companies. Each person knows their part, but the final document still has to sound coherent, meet every requirement, and arrive on time.
Sometimes the pieces are procedures, policies, schedules, quality requirements, forms, and supporting documents that need to become a usable system rather than a pile of files. Sometimes they’re research, interviews, old drafts, stories, and ideas that need to become an article, a book, a workbook, a website, or a newsletter.
And sometimes the pieces are people, deadlines, decisions, and expectations that have stopped moving in the same direction.
The project changes, but the work underneath it remains familiar. I look at the whole, then I look at the parts. I notice what’s missing, what’s duplicated, what’s unclear, and what’s keeping the work from moving forward. Then I help put it together.
The Big Picture and the People Inside It
The old Applied Pro website also talked about something I still consider essential: keeping the big-picture goals of a project in view without losing sight of the people doing the work. That part still matters, and over the years I’ve learned that the people side of a project is rarely separate from the rest of it.
A process can look perfect on paper and still fail if it ignores the people expected to carry it out. A schedule can be technically complete and still be unrealistic. A team can have all the right expertise and still struggle because expectations are unclear, decisions are delayed, personalities are colliding, or too much knowledge lives with one person.
Good project support requires both views at once. You have to understand the larger objective while also paying attention to how the work will actually happen. That means noticing when a requirement hasn’t been assigned, when a document technically exists but isn’t usable, or when a small gap in communication is about to become a much larger problem.
That outside perspective is one of the reasons consultants can be valuable. The people inside an organization know its history, culture, relationships, habits, and unwritten rules. They know why certain decisions were made and why certain workarounds exist. An outside consultant can respect all of that while still noticing the patterns and gaps that become difficult to see when you live with them every day.
In that 2008 post, I used a rather elaborate analogy about walking into a company’s forest, looking at the forest, the trees, and the leaves, and then stepping outside into the field beyond.
It was a lot of forest.
But the point was sound. Sometimes you have to understand every leaf. Sometimes you have to step back far enough to see the entire landscape. Most of the time, you have to be able to do both without getting lost in the woods.
What Has Changed
The titles I’ve used over the years have changed. I’ve called myself an administrative professional, project manager, management consultant, proposal manager, editor, writer, coach, and project support person. Depending on the day and the project, several of those descriptions may be accurate at once.
The tools have changed too. In 2008, I was proud to explain how a virtual presence could supplement on-site work. Today, remote collaboration, shared documents, virtual meetings, and distributed teams are ordinary parts of professional life. Back then, it sounded innovative. Now it sounds like Tuesday.
The scale and complexity of the work have grown. I now spend much of my consulting time supporting federal proposals, multi-company teams, procedures, management plans, quality reviews, technical documents, and the coordination required to bring all of those pieces together.
My writing work has grown alongside it. I’ve written on the web since 2001, published three books, written newsletters, created workbooks, edited countless drafts, and helped other people clarify what they’re trying to say.
What hasn’t changed is the way I approach the work. I listen. I ask questions. I look for what’s missing. I organize information. I pay attention to both the big picture and the details that can quietly derail it. I help people make decisions, strengthen the work, and bring it to completion.
Applied Pro once described its purpose this way: My business is about supporting your business.
That remains true, although the business now has my name at the top of the page.
DebraOConnor.com is a new professional home, but the work behind it isn’t new. It carries more than two decades of consulting, project support, document management, quality assurance, editing, writing, and learning how to describe work that has never fit neatly into one box.
The title has changed more than once, but the work hasn’t.