Seven Crucial Habits for Successful Project Management

I'm not sure what you're really asking there . So , for those of you who follow along quite often , you know that Chuck took off a couple of weeks from doing the last streams , one because I was working out of town , and then last week I wasn't really feeling that well . So , oh , so , you know . You know he said the installer class .

I'm not aware of any friend . Send me a message on TikTok . I want to follow up with you because I got an idea . Ok , so Thursday nights I always do these question-answer sessions , but tonight , like I said , I'm doing something a little different and I don't know why this just it just lay .

It got laid on my heart to do a show on seven habits of successful project managers , right ? So , oh , mick George is in the house running the keep running the , the scoreboard out of volleyball . So he's always on . I'm telling you , he's one of my , one of my people , who's always , always on ? Now , you always know .

I started off my after hours of live stream with what are you drinking ? What are you drinking ? Tell me in the comments . What are you drinking tonight ? Adult beverages are allowed . This is Zevia Roots beer mixed with water . That's what I'm drinking . Tell me in the chat box what you were drinking .

You know , we just got a whole bunch of these things called pineapple pairs from a neighbor . Like you know how big a five gallon bucket is . We have like six of those , five or six of those . So we we've been pairing peas , peas and pairing , we have been canning pears . Say that three times real fast , woof , yeah , and I'm not even drinking Holy cow .

And so we have a couple of full-size Mason jars of pear juice . Now , we don't do our , we don't make sugar with our stuff , so it's just regular pear juice . I'm telling you what , oh my gosh , that stuff is great . It is great . I gotta watch it , though , because it's it can be kind of kind of give me a trouble . You know what I mean .

So look at here , we got some people in the house . Tom is in the house . Hello , mr Tom , what time are you on and what platforms , so I'm off . The live stream is on at 6pm Thursday night , thursday nights , eastern Standard Time , on LinkedIn , youtube , facebook and TikTok . Okay , that answers your question right there . The podcast airs on Monday nights .

On Monday nights , steve Cowles in the house . He is drinking water . That's probably good , because Steve is going to be hopping on with a study group with me in a little bit and and John is in the house . Hey , john , I haven't seen you in a while . My friend , good to see you , good to see you .

So I'm really excited about tonight's show because it's all about project management , project management , you know . Oh , you forgot to do the acronym challenge . Oh , my gosh , if you know me , I do the acronym challenge , so I gotta do the acronym . And so tonight's acronym has something to do with project management . The acronym is TPM TPM . Put in the chat box .

What do you think ? Tpm means , right , tpm ? So I'll give you a second there to type that in . What does that acronym mean ? It has something to do with tonight's shows . Michael is in the house . Michael is drinking ginger beer . Hello , michael . Michael is uh . Um , oh , look at you .

Michael has also got the first correct answer Telecommunications project management . Ed , the old tech guy is in the house . Hello Ed , how you doing , my friend ? Yeah , tpm , telecommunications project management . Now you might be asking well , how is telecommunications project management different from project management ?

So project management is very similar to telecommunications project management . Telecommunications project management is fine tuned for our industry . You know , project management managing widgets doesn't really matter , but there are some nuances to our business . So telecommunications project management is what you really want to get certified in in this industry .

Bixie has a great project management class and certification that you can get . I've got a copy of their latest project management book . I should do a study group on project management . Right now . We're a little more than halfway through our RCD study group and I'm I'm thinking around with the idea of doing one for installers and technicians .

That's why I told you to hit me up with a direct message on TikTok , right ? So let's talk about project management , all right , and one of the things our industry is really horrible about is giving somebody the project management title who is not a project manager . I said it . Yep , I said it . I put it out there . We're bad .

We're bad as an industry doing that . You know somebody's really good at running jobs and then , because they want more money or they want to title . We'll give them that title of a project management and they're really nothing but a glorified lead foreman , a glorified lead technician . Now there's there's nothing wrong with those positions Absolutely . I've been them .

Nothing wrong with them , but they're not project managers . Our industry has been really horrible about doing that . So what does a project manager do ? Right Now ?

I'm not going to give you the complete list of what a project manager does , because that in itself will take the 30 minutes that I have for this show , and I got seven tips , seven tips I got to get through before the end of this thing , right . So there are many tasks here , but here's a few of the critical ones .

Here's the a few project management tasks that you better be really good at . First one is monitoring and adhering to labor and material budgets .

Monitoring and adhering to labor material budgets Because as a project manager , you will get fired faster if you projects consistently go into the red , then you will anything else , because if you're not making money for the company , zip , gone , gone . I said it , yep . So monitoring and adhering to labor budgets , that's , that's right .

When someone tells me they're a project manager and they're working on a project . The first question I ask them . The first question I ask them how many hours in that project , and I usually get a stair look . And when I get that stair look I know they're not a true project manager .

A true project manager will be able to tell you how many hours they have in their project . Another key thing that a project manager is going to do is adhering to a Schedule . Project schedule , okay , that tells us when we're gonna be there , when we're gonna do certain tasks , when the project has to be done by .

They're also gonna be really good at resource allocation , Allocation , resource allocation . So they know , hey , we need the , the , the big cable reels to do the backbone cable on these dates . We need the fiber crew to come out and certify on such such day . And you must be listening to my show too much because it says communication , communication , communication .

That's one of the pillars on my show . I have 146 pro tips on my list on my website . Let's talk cabling , calm , go look at it . And and pro tip number one is Document , document , document . And pro tip number two is communicate , communicate , communicate , yes , yes .

And then the other thing that a project manager is really gonna be doing in the telecommunications industry is to make sure that the Stakeholder is satisfied with the project . Now , for those who may not know what a stakeholder is , that's somebody who has a vested interest in the project . There's internal and there's external stakeholders .

An An internal stakeholder might be your operations manager , the owner of the company , the person who runs the warehouse . Your , your , your crew are internal stakeholders . External stakeholders would be the customer , maybe the electrical inspector , maybe your local distribution . Right Now , some of those you really care about making more happy than others , right ?

Do you really care about making sure that your , your , your local salesperson at gray bar , by the way , love gray bar , love gray bar . Do you really make sure that your local gray bar get person is happy over before , your customers happy Now ? Granted , you want to keep your distribution happy because they can make your , your project successful , and that's so .

Always treat your distribution people with With due respect , and due respect Do respect . So let's go through these tips , okay . So the first one I want to talk about is boom , there it is be prepared , be prepared , right . So Prep , being prepared is going to be the foundation to make sure that you're successful .

Some of the benefits of being prepared is it's going to keep you from doing last-minute scrambling , you know , because it's more efficient to schedule ahead , to have that , that cable certifier at the project when you need it , then having to call rent telco three days before , have them overnight a tester because you didn't think ahead Right , and when you have that

additional time , it allows you for better decision-making . You're not rushed right , you're not rushed right , you're not rushed right . And it's going to build confidence amongst all of your stakeholders if you're able to do that .

Because , number one , you want your stakeholders feeling like they are part of the project , that they , they , they have , they're a vested interest in the project . Oh , you know what I forgot to put on ? One thing here I forgot to put on I'm trying something new on this , on this episode , so I'm gonna run a ticker .

Yeah , I figured how to do this recently , so I'm gonna let that ticker run for the rest of the program on on the live streams right Now . One of the ways that you can help prepare yourself for success , give yourself a good foundation for success , is the checklist . I'm a big fan of checklist and here's why .

You know , for those of you know me , you know my one of my sons is an airline pilot and every time he takes off there's a checklist that he's got to go through every single time he takes off , and it doesn't matter if he's flown that particular plane a thousand times , he's got to go through that checklist . And what that checklist does ?

It's going to define Step-by-step procedures so that way nothing gets missed , right ? It's also gonna offer a tangible measures of your progress . See , that way you know , oh wait , wait a minute . So I got my checklist , I've done my . I'll give you an example . I used to do a lot of QA inspectors . We had a specific QA checklist for QA inspections .

So that way I knew that I looked at certain things all the time . Checklists are your friend , and I know you probably think oh , chuck , great , you're making more paperwork , yes , but it's better than flying in the sea to your pants , right ? You'll be more successful more often if you have some kind of a checklist . Okay , you will . And here's another .

Here's an advantage , another advantage of Checklists if you have a checklist for established procedures like , for example , how to order material for your job , and you know Compile the bill of materials , get the pricing , get commit , get approval from your operations manager , get the day delivery dates by by the distribution , get the delivery schedule Coordinated with the

general contractor on the site . If everybody's working on the same checklist , then all of the project managers in the same company Are doing the their projects the exact same way and there's a value there . There is a value there because , let's say this , this happened to me one time one of our project managers Got fired .

I'm not gonna say why they got fired , because that's irrelevant to the story , but one of our project managers got fired one time and we were able to take one of our other project managers from not our office , but from a sister office three states away , because they were slow .

So we pulled the project manager up , dropped him in on that project and , because we used checklists for everything , he was up to speed faster than he would have been , had or not been some type of a checklist . So don't be afraid of checklist , don't be afraid of paperwork . Okay , they're . They're really your friend . They are really your friend .

Okay , and then , and then the other side , the other part of that being prepared , is tools and resources . Yes , yes . So For tools , know what you need , schedule what you need .

Hopefully your company has some type of a sign-out process , right , and maybe maybe use Some project management software , right , project management software , because that helps track all that stuff . And then communication platforms to make the correspondence easier . Those are the two biggest things there for you .

So let's now let's talk about the second thing right Planning for risk . Planning for risk . I'm sorry , my one-man base have you seen me kind of delay . I got switched over to the graphics screen , put up the new graphic . So I'm I'm a one-man band . I still got to educate my wife on how to use this platform . Plan for risk .

So risk is the potential that something's gonna

go wrong . I'm gonna tell you now , as a project manager who's managed several projects , every single project I did had something go wrong , every single one . Sometimes it was a minor thing , sometimes it was a huge thing , and I'm gonna say this out loud so other project managers know that they're not out there alone .

I royally messed up a project one time , royally messed up a project one time . It was a call center for a very large communications company . It was 2,000 seats , 2,000 seats , 2,000 faceplates , yeah , yeah , 6,000 cables , cause every faceplate had four cables to it . And guess what Chuck did ? We ?

We terminate , tested the cable and right before the cutover we realized that all of the guys terminated everything T568A , not T568B , I mean literally a week before cutover , a week before cutover . So it happens , it can happen to anybody . Now , luckily , because I'd been a fan a fan , I'd been a good friend and and and service my customer .

They were willing to work with me and they didn't make me go back and change all of those jacks and retest everything , right . So recognize that things go wrong , right . And one of the ways you can do that is is to conduct what's called a SWAT analysis SWOT strength , weaknesses , opportunities and threats . That's your homework assignment . Look up SWAT .

Maybe I should do a show on SWAT . I might do , I might do a future show on SWAT . I just I just somebody remind me after the show because I'm too busy writing notes , right . Another cool thing , another great thing about risk is seek expert advice . You're not an expert at everything .

I tell people it's all the time they , they , they see all the content I'm putting out and they think that I'm an expert at everything . I am not . I I'm . I have weak areas , just like everybody else . Das not good at it . Wireless eh Right , pulling , terminating testing . Category-rated cable and fire optic cable Strong strong like bull , right , I mean .

But I'm not an expert in other areas , so , but I do know that you know what . I might need an expert to help me with that . Another thing is to have to help you with that , excuse me . Another thing you really need to do for planning for risk is to have some type of a contingency plan , some type of contingency plan .

The best thing to do as a project manager is is during the project planning phase . There's there's five phases to a project and I'm not gonna go through that . I did a whole series on project management phases on the podcast about a year and a half ago . Go back and watch them , but one of them is project planning , right .

So during the project planning , what you really wanna do is you want to sit down and try to think of everything that could go wrong , right , everything . For example , if the project is gonna happen in Ohio in December , hmm , how is the cold gonna affect this ? How's the cold gonna affect the cable ? What happens ? Oh , here's a good one .

What happens if distribution can't get me my materials because there's too much snow on the ground ? What's your contingency plan ?

See , the contingency plan is thinking about it , because if you've already thought about what could go wrong , that's gonna make you quicker on your feet because it's you're gonna be able to find your triggers and you're gonna be able to plan for that activation . Does that make sense , right ?

It's also gonna help again kind of talk goes back to earlier it's gonna help you allocate those resources , because if you can think about it ahead of time , you're already halfway there to coming up with a plan with that and then develop some kind of a strategy . Communication strategy that's where we fall . That's where we fall .

Develop some kind of a communication strategy Again , that same project where we kind of went south on it after that error was brought to light . We had to develop a communications plan where I had to report to not my boss but my boss's boss's boss daily on what we were doing .

I had to report to the customer daily as to what we were doing to help solve that problem . So part of your risk plan should be part of that as well . And another thing is is try to have a good crisis management team , right ?

So what you wanna do is you wanna assemble a team that's gonna be able to help you through any kind of emergency that you're gonna be have . Select your team members based on their skill sets and their experiences , right ?

So if somebody is really good with fiber , but you know , and just know , that even though he might be working on another project , you might wanna dedicate that person , say , look , you go , my crisis team if something goes wrong , that way we can have it taken care of right . And then a good thing , too , is to train in crisis management .

Right , is training it ? The next step , the third thing that you really want to be doing is always listen , always listen . You know communicate , communicate , communicate right . Make conversations reciprocal , encourage open dialogue .

We , as project managers , sometimes we got so much on our shoulders , sometimes we get so frustrated that we may not be listening to people right . Things can happen . So one of the best things to do is is use what's called active listening techniques . Active listening techniques . So what does that mean ?

For example , one good example of active listening techniques is , if you're in there , if you're having a conversation with somebody in a meeting , put your phone away , turn your phone off , silence it better . Yet , leave it out in the car , because even the mere act of setting the phone on the desk in front of you while you're talking to that person .

Subconsciously , it sends a signal that they're important , but not important enough that you couldn't be undisturbed . Okay , pay attention to nonverbal cues . There's another good trait for active listening .

So , for example , I learned in a Bixie class many , many years ago and I'm just gonna guess this number because I can't remember exactly it's like 50% , 60% of all communication is done nonverbally , yeah , nonverbally . So pay attention to those cues .

So if you're sitting there , you're talking to the customer and you just told them about something that went wrong , and they're sitting like this , what are they telling you ? Tell me in the chat box , if somebody's sitting like this , when you're giving them bad news , what does that tell you ? What verbal cue , what nonverbal cue Am I giving you ?

Okay , so maintain eye contact with them . Maintain eye contact , because if they're talking to you and you're you know , ah , does that really mean you're listening ? No , no , no . And then , once you talk back and forth , reflect on what you've heard . Now there's a guy that I used to work with when I got promoted from being an estimator to a division estimator .

I had to train my replacement . His name was Rick . Rick was kind of an odd guy , but I'll tell you what he was an excellent , excellent estimator , excellent estimator , and one of the things that Rick used to do and initially used to annoy me until I figured out what he was doing . We would do meetings with customers .

The customer would tell him something and then he would state it back to the customer , but just a little bit differently , and I finally figured out what he was doing is he was confirming what he heard in his language ,

right ? So reflect what you hear and be patient , be patient , just remember , especially when we're talking to customers but not every customer is an IT guy , like the old tech guy . Not every customer you're gonna deal with is a structured key . When you're expert , right , be patient with them . They may not know the difference between cat five and cat five E .

If you know the difference between cat five and cat five E , put it in the chat box . Let's see if somebody knows that , right . And then so the whole , the whole listening doesn't just apply to customers , it also applies to your internal stakeholders , doesn't it ? Your internal stakeholders ?

So you want to be able to have a clear communication path with your boss , with your peers , with the people that report to you . So here's the problem you're gonna have as a project manager the people who report to you may not , may not be willing to come to talk to you because they're afraid of you , right ?

So what you might want to do is you might want to establish some way of doing anonymous surveys . Your survey monkey is really good at that . You can make a survey , monkey , pretty quick and then you can have it set up as anonymous . Is that way you can get some feedback .

You can send it out to your crew and say hey , here's a short survey , just want to talk about how I'm doing . Just be prepared that you might get some answers that you may not like , right ? The key is just remember make those changes , make those changes . Right . You might also want to do regular one-on-one check-ins .

So what I used to do quite often as a project manager is I'd show up on a job site and I would just go by and check on the crew , sometimes just to see how they were doing .

Sometimes I would just buy them lunch , and when I would buy them lunch , I did that under the disguise of having a team meeting and I would just talk to them hey , how's everything going ? Be frank with me . How's this project running ? Is there anything that I could do to make this project better ? Are we failing anywhere ?

What are we doing good Right Now , there's going to be a bit of a learning curve here , because if you're a new project manager , if you're a new project manager and they don't know you yet , you're going to have to build some trust with them first . You're going to have to build some trust with them first . Just our number four always be in control .

Always be in control . Right , and that's going to be hard . That's going to be hard because we're going to be walking a tightrope between controlling everything but yet giving our crews enough freedom to be successful . That's kind of a tightrope we got to walk .

So what you might want to do is you might want to use some what's called key performance indicators KPIs right To measure and control effectively . So a KPI , basically it's a quantifiably measurable performance over time for a specific objective . So it's going to tie in with your scheduling function .

So , for example and that's why it's so important to , as a good project manager , you better come up with a schedule , but it's better if you print off that schedule and you make everybody aware of that schedule , so that way everybody's all on the same page , right ? So it kind of ties in with all that .

So that way you know , hey , if on week one we should be done putting in the JLX , week two we should be done pulling the cable . Week three we should be terminating . Week four we should be doing final cut . Okay , it's a imagine this imagine playing a football game if you didn't know where the line for the next down was .

Imagine playing a football game if you didn't know where the goal line is . That's what a schedule is . That's what a schedule is . It sets those goals . So everybody knows everybody's all heading in the same direction . Nobody's going 14 different directions , right ? You also want to allow autonomy within your teams , right ?

Allow them to give them some freedom to make some decisions right . Allow them some freedom to make some decisions , because if they got to call you all the time to you know well , we're done pulling the cable . Now what do we do ? Drop them down on the wall . Give them some autonomy , right , because , hey , it gives them again skin in the game .

It's going to make them feel trusted and help build that trust with you .

And then also , if you're doing something else , if you're a project manager rarely project managing one project , they're usually doing multiple projects , so you might be working on a schedule for a different project when you get that phone call from the project , from the crew , and now we have to go back to what you're doing . You've been interrupted .

It's going to take you time to get back into what you were doing before . So it can help you all the way around .

But you do have to set boundaries as to what decisions those crews can do and make sure that those decisions or they understand that their decisions have to align with your company policies Like , for example , the level of quality , safety , safety that's a big one there , because a lot of people out in the field will take time , will take shortcuts , safety shortcuts

and be work unsafe because they're under the fear oh , I gotta get it done . Is that something your company allows , by the way ? It shouldn't be . But what if it does ? And then the other part too is know that there's some things you can control and there's some things that you can't control . So be resourceful in having adaptable skills .

Right , you might wanna do scenario planning for uncontrollable variables . So if I just kind of give an example , whenever my wife and I go out on our dates , we'll be sitting or eating dinner and I'll say , okay , somebody just walked through the front door with a gun . What do we do ? And we say , okay , well , maybe we'll drop what we're doing .

We'll go through the kitchen , through the door at the back . Practice that so that way it becomes second nature . Develop those skills to be able to adapt . With project management you might wanna think of okay , well , what if the drywallers aren't gonna have all the walls up in time for us to terminate the jacks ? What's our plan to get around that ?

Is there a different area of the project we can shift to ? Maybe pulling the fiber backbone ? Right , there you go . Number five being able to delegate . Delegate , I said it . Yep , I said it . We are horrible project managers and not being good at delegating stuff .

Again , this all hinges on that trust we were just talking about not too long ago with your crews , right ? So ?

But you do need to learn to delegate , because if you delegate some of your tasks , it's gonna help you be more efficient , because you can focus on the things that you need to do , and it's gonna help build that team confidence , gonna help those team members feel like again they have skin in the game and here's a beautiful thing about this it's going to help

you develop skills within your team members so that they can grow in their career path . My gosh , they might be become future project managers . A good project manager is always training their replacement . A good project manager is always training their replacement . Yeah , yeah , our energy is bad about that .

We're good at keeping information close to our chest because we're afraid , my God , if I teach this new guy to do my job , then I'll lose my job . That's the wrong way to think . That's the wrong way to think right . But you do need to learn how to delegate effectively . Delegate who was I think it was Colin Powell delegate , but follow up right .

Learn how to delegate effectively . So give them a clear , clear path of expectations and then follow up on those expectations right , give them those clear goals . The sixth thing I want to talk about is be of service . Be of service yep . Now , a lot of this comes from me being a Christian .

I don't put that out there very often , but I am a Christian and so you want to practice what's called servant leadership . Servant leadership , and that's a principle of leading by serving . Right , our industry we're really bad . It's us versus them when it comes to project managers and crews . But you want to foster a culture of your crew of mutual respect .

Because , let's be honest , as installers out there , sometimes we don't like project managers because the company hired some guy out of college and he's never pulled cable day in life , so we don't have respect for them . Project managers sometimes don't have respect for crews because they're just knuckle dragging cable guys , right , you have to come .

You both have to come from a mutual respect , right , and don't ever ask your team to do something that you're not willing to do . Okay , servant leadership , and then empower your team members , your subordinates , through guidance , be proactive in identifying team challenges and how they can improve , and then have an open door policy , have an open door policy .

Now , having an open door policy doesn't really mean make sure your door's open , it just literally means make yourself available . So , if they have a question , comment , concern and one of my pet peeves there's somebody when I hear a project manager that was a stupid question . No , it wasn't . There's no such thing as a stupid question .

Right , always approach it as a point from learning . Check in with your team regularly . It may be even use technology to be virtually available , and that's easy in today's environment with Zoom and everything else . You don't necessarily have to drive three hours to that job site .

They can get out their company cell phone and do teams , microsoft teams , and turn on the camera and they can show you stuff . Right , make yourself available . Make yourself available . The last one , and this is one of my favorite ones I hope I hit the wrong button there . There we go . The last one is you guessed it . Always question and always learn .

Oops , turned it off by accident . Always question , always learn . Right the curse of competency , how your comfort zone can lead to stagnation . Right , if you're only working in your box , if you're comfortable with you , are never going to grow as a person . You're never going to grow as a project manager . It's you know . We learn through our mistakes , right .

We learn through our mistakes . Always challenge yourself with new types of projects . I challenge you right now , right here , right today . Pick a skill . Pick a skill that you want to learn next year relating to project management . That's my challenge to you right now . And then also make sure that you encourage a culture of feedback , right .

So always be teaching people , always be learning and always make sure that you give good feedback to your crews , because that's going to help them perform better . Continue to education . There's no reason not to be educated , right . There's all kinds of podcasts and vlogs out there nowadays Cable installation maintenance magazine , bright talk , tech talk with Steve .

There's all kinds of great content out there that you can watch to become more efficient . There's . If you're not learning or you can't find a place to learn , you're not trying hard enough . I said it . I said it .

I did yes , because you got to keep up with industry trends and technologies in this industry , because our industry literally changes at the speed of light . When I got in this cable , we weren't even pulling category rated cable and now we're up to category eight . That's why it cracks me up . People say , well , yeah , cat 5E is going to be around forever .

No , it's not . No , it's not , it will eventually go away . I just heard recently from a peer that Cat 5E is only . It was actually it was . Somebody at a distribution was telling me this Cat 5E is literally only about 10% of the cable sales that they do . Right now . Everything's Cat 6 or Cat 6A .

At some point in time , because they're not making enough Cat 5E , the cost was going to go up and people say , wait a minute , why am I buying Cat 5E at more expensive than I got to buy Cat 6 ? So keep up with the codes , stay up with the codes , stay up with your standards , updates . Volunteer , become a volunteer on a committee member .

That's a great way to stay current with codes and standards , because they do regular meetings . They do regular meetings and then engage in some type of a mentorship or mentor or mentee mentorship , because that's going to help broaden your perspective , because the worst thing you can do is be a victim of a group think or the way that you've always been thinking .

So it's always good to mentor with somebody who comes from a different background than you , who might be thinking , because I've learned a lot that way . I truly have , by finding mentors who are different than me . I have a female mentor , I have an older mentor , I have a younger mentor , so I learn from them , I truly learn from them .

So those are my seven tips for the show . Let me know if you learned anything from today's podcast or today's live stream I'm going to do revert back to the Q&A for next week . Now , next week I'll be a little bit different .

I won't have this background , I'll be on the road next week , but the key is to keep learning because remember oh , and somebody says Chuck , remember Cat 4 ? Yeah , it was around for literally like two weeks , two weeks , yeah , exactly . So just remember . The best way , the most consistent way to be successful , is to remember . Knowledge is power . Take care .