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Claude Cowork for Project Managers
Issue #012
Date: 23 March 2026
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Hey there, Reader,
When I was a brand-new Major in the Marine Corps, I arrived in the country of Bahrain and immediately got handed the lead planner for a multi-country exercise planning effort in the country of Egypt.
Pregnant wife. New country. First time living in the Middle East vs. deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan.
And I now had to lead a cross-functional team of military technical subject matter experts into Egypt and plan out this exercise.
It's safe to say, I had A LOT to learn and I had to learn it quickly!
Lets Get Proactive Over Reactive!
Quote of the Week
“Adventure is just bad planning.”
~ Ronald Amundsen
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Story of the Week
To get myself up to speed and to learn as much as I could as quickly as possible, I went to the Marine Corps Center for Lessons Learned, a repository of all lessons learned from through the Marine Corps.
With some searching, I found past iterations of the Egyptian exercise and was able to pull and download every one on the database.
Then, I sat down and read through every single one of them. Which took me roughly a week in itself. I was still reading them while on the plane heading to Egypt. Taking a copious amount of notes in the process.
And majority of what I read, I was able to apply while on the ground planning.
By the end of that week-long planning event, I realized something: I would have made a dozen mistakes without those documents.
There would have been wasted time on things that didn't matter. And I easily would have found myself in culture clashes I wouldn't have naturally understood were occurring.
Those lessons learned documents were my shortcut to expertise I didn't have yet.
Here's why I'm telling you this now:
That's exactly what Claude Cowork is for your projects.
It's not there to replace you. It's there to compress months of learning into hours. It handles the admin work, the documentation, the synthesis, the pattern-finding.
It does this so you can focus on what only you can do: the human-to-human leadership and coordination.
The Real Risk
I get asked all the time: "Russ, isn't AI going to replace project managers?"
And my answer is always the same: Not the ones who use it.
The PMs who will be replaced are the ones who didn't embrace these capabilities. The ones still manually building status reports when AI can draft them in seconds. The ones drowning in administrative work when they could be in strategy conversations with their stakeholders.
You don't compete with AI by ignoring it.
You compete by getting better at using it than your peers do.
The Bearded Risk PM on YouTube
Are you embracing tools like Claude Cowork? And if not, is it because you don't know how to use it?
This week, I break down a Basic Claude Cowork example that any level PM can embrace:
Please don't forget to "Like" the video and Comment if you are using tools like Claude Cowork!
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44Risk PM Courses and More!
If you've been thinking about getting your PMP® or PMI-RMP® in 2026 (and you should - the market demand is only growing right now), below are your next chances:
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New 2026 PMP® Course based on PMBOK 8th Edition
Dates: 18-19/25-26 April
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What's Included: All study materials, practice exam, 30 contact hours, application guidance, and access to me.
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The Roadmap to the PMI-RMP® Certification.
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PM Dad Joke of the Week
Why did the project manager refuse to work on Easter projects?
Too many baskets to manage.
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Hit reply and let me know if you have any questions (or use the speak pipe below if you want to send me a message). I read every response, and I might be able to help you figure out your next move.
Russ Parker
Founder, 44Risk PM
PMP® | PMI-RMP® | PMI-ACP® | Retired USMC
PMI-ATP Instructor for the PMP® and PMI-RMP®
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