On the team, it’s all about unity. An interview with Sebastian, Project Manager at Metapack
Sebastian is a team player both as a Project Manager at Metapack and after hours as a member of the American football team from Zielona Góra. We support him in both of these roles. Are they very different from each other? What are the professional and sports challenges facing our employee? Read the conversation with Sebastian.
Sebastian, you are a Project Manager at Metapack. Tell us what is your job about exactly.
I manage projects, which means strapping all topics related to the implementation of a specific project. In the beginning, I get information about the client and what they need to get from us. I get a team for this, and our job is simply to deliver a specific solution. We start by talking over the unclear client topics, then we contact the courier and determine the issues that need to be completed, i.e. specific elements needed for configuration. We pass on all the arrangements to our team, and from that moment on, our internal work, communication with the team, and work on the product come into play.
What does team management in Metapack look like? Do you always have the same people under you or is it variable?
At Metapack, teams are fluid. We get assigned, so-called CIs, i.e. people from Customer Implementation or Carrier Implementation, depending on who the specific platform applies to. For this, I sometimes catch up with development teams as well. At the same time, it is not that we are strictly responsible for the team, very often these topics are very scattered. So we go to one team, park one task there, then go to the other team, and leave the next task. We, as Project Managers, have to collect it all, put it together, and go to a third person who will implement it all. Our main task is to pin everything together and complete the project.
What is the most difficult part of such distributed task management? Because on the one hand, you are not responsible for carrying out specific tasks, but you are responsible for the whole project.
Perhaps the most difficult thing is the constant battle for time, because as a Project Manager you have to maneuver very often between your tasks, and the team that carries them out also has assignments from other people. And the question arises – which one is more important at the moment. So our internal communication plays a big role, we have to quickly clarify the topics, decide who can jump in and who has more pressing topics, and who can withstand other tasks for a while.
On top of that, there is a client who also probably has his three cents to add…
Yes, it always happens. Sometimes a customer will come and swallow certain topics without any problems, for example, if something needs to be parked, or paused because some unexpected elements have arisen, say, due to delays on the courier’s side. Sometimes the client can help with such topics, they try to escalate them, push them on the courier side or do the same with us. If there is a need for escalation, it either hits us and then we already properly send the problem across the entire Metapack network or go directly to the person who takes care of the entire portfolio, and we inform what the situation is, what is pressing and we organize work together.
So you have to control many topics at once. Tell me, then, where is the satisfaction with what you do? What makes this job enjoyable?
Probably the moment when you see that everything has moved, that these parcels are actually slipping through. It doesn’t matter if it’s ten packages a day for a customer who is just starting or ten thousand a day for big e-commerce. You have fun making it happen and knowing you were part of the process. Despite the difficulties along the way, all the challenges, it all worked out in the end and that’s really cool.
Let’s go back for a moment to your beginnings in Metapack. What is your history in the company and how has your career gone so far?
I joined Metapack in August 2020 when COVID broke out. The job I was in before, unfortunately, froze. It was a shipping company that had been hit by the hardships of the pandemic. I had to look for other options and they were looking for someone to run their projects in Metapack. I applied and went through several stages, including an interview with the team. This was one of the most interesting and perhaps the most non-standard elements that I encountered while recruiting here in the local job market.
Why?
Very often you come to an interview, there is a person from HR, you go through one stage, then another, let’s say with your supervisor, and here, in Metapack, comes this additional stage that allows you to talk to the entire team. You can not only check if you meet the requirements of the company and your future superiors but also find out if you fit the team. Will what they have to convey surprise you in some way and coincide with what you have heard so far in the previous stages of the interviews. On the other hand, the team can also see if you are responding to them. For example, the standard question arises: cheesecake with or without raisins (laughs).
You said you came to Metapack from a shipping company. Were you dealing with IT there?
Yes. In my previous company, I was working on IT solutions, before that, I spent ten years in a company dealing with software creation and development. So I wasn’t completely green, but I was definitely a newbie when it comes to courier issues. A normal person is unaware of how many elements are involved when shipping a package. For them, there is an address, weight, and label. For us, there are thousands of other things. For example, when a courier suddenly asks you for some numbering ranges or says that the barcode does not suit him, because it reads two-hundredths worse than they expected. Or that some files have not arrived and therefore the package cannot be sent. There are a lot of these combinations.
Also read: From Summer Academy to Team Leader in a year and a half – meet Patryk
So you had a lot of knowledge to learn at the beginning, and you joined the company in the era of a pandemic when Metapackers worked mainly remotely. How did you handle it?
It was hard to switch from office work to remote work. What was missing the most was the desk-to-desk contact, to be able to talk something over right away. Nevertheless, it quickly became possible to get in touch with the entire team. We’ve dealt with it in different ways, be it Slack or Zoom. It wasn’t that I was left on my own, but in fact, whenever I had doubts or questions, I could safely return to the team or even go anywhere in Metapack and ask for help. Because what is very cool here and what I liked from the beginning is that no person tells you: sorry, I don’t have time. In the worst case, you’ll hear: you know what, I can’t do it now, because I’m on my way to a meeting, let’s get back to the topic in an hour or two. Or you will get a bearing on another person who can help. Questions never go unanswered and you don’t have the discomfort that something cannot be pushed any further.
Yes, because at Metapack we work as a team, and for you – as we know – being a team player is important also after hours. You are a member of the Wataha football team. Do you see any similarities between working as a Project Manager and playing on the pitch?
On each team, I would certainly say that it’s all about unity. In football, everyone has their position, everyone has to know exactly what they are doing because a friend next to him has a different task, the same way as Metapackers do. They know that if you take two steps to the left, then they have to take a step left and a step right, take someone over. If there is no such awareness and cooperation, we will be walking all over each other and nothing will come of it. It is very similar here, at Metapack.
Where did the idea for such an unusual and demanding sport come from?
The beginnings were related to my previous job, it was there that I was brought into the team. In the beginning, as a help for the team, to cover organizational and technical topics, such as transmission details, and technological solutions. I slowly started learning about the sport. Starting, I had completely different views on football. I didn’t understand what these people were running for, I thought that they had to jump into the end zone with the ball, that you only get points for this. Later it turned out to be really like a big game of chess. Each of these figures weighs, admittedly, over a hundred kilos. This season, one of our boys weighs 155 kg, and the record holder in the league is just under 180 kg. So it is quite big a figure to move, and also quite big a figure who moves others (laughs). And so a slow recognition began, first from the outside, then from the inside of the team.
Did you recruit someone from Metapack to your team?
Not yet, but it turns out that a few people have followed football before, so we gained some new fans. We haven’t managed to recruit anyone yet, but we will try, why not?
So you have fans among the Metapackers, maybe also future team members, but you can also count on the support from the company because you participate in the Metapack Active program. Tell us briefly what it is about and how do you use this benefit?
Exactly, it is the second year in a row that Metapack supports me in my sports passion – and not only me, because a large group of Metapackers is active in various fields. It is rare for a company to strongly promote the physical activities and hobbies of its employees, and thanks to the MetapackActive program, we have a really wide range of amenities. Starting from providing company cars to drive to competitions, through sports gadgets, to financial support that helps us cover some of the costs related to our passions.
What are your plans for this season as a team? What do you want to achieve? Because we know there’s a new trainer too, or rather a new-old one.
Yes, a new-old trainer, i.e. the one with whom we started cooperation in 2020. He flew in, but moments later we had to send him back because of the pandemic. Since then, he has accompanied us remotely, because we wanted to implement some basics earlier and prepare everything for his return. For us, however, internally, it is still a return to the 11-person formula. During the last years of the pandemic, we played in a nine-person formula, i.e. a bit smaller. The dimensions of the field are the same, the rules are the same, but we are two players short. The pitch opens up and the game becomes more challenging. Now we’re back to eleven, that is, this full-size form.
You are in the second league. Is there a promotion plan or are you focusing on holding your position for now?
For now, our goal is to keep and calm down, because we also have some new people on the team and we will see how it ends. We do not set ourselves the goal of entering the play-offs or reaching the quarter-finals or the semi-finals, because it is too early after our return. We have to change these tracks a bit, we are already starting to think slowly about the fact that we need to start recruiting new players. For the last two years, the school and all centers where you could try to advertise were closed. Of course, people still showed up for recruitment, but it was not the amount that we would expect. And the thing is, you have to get a little convincing about this sport. Not everyone likes playing in contact, and even so, the beginnings are always hard. You have to break through that you can, hit someone on the pitch, that you can also get hit legally. But when you survive that first contact, most people get over it and suddenly find it fun. And it really is fun.
