208 - TZL - Justin Smith

this industry and involved with this space for 20 plus years. I also want to say that this is not an indictment of the design industry. I think most vertical industries struggle with this in some way, shape or form, it's just that we just have to come up with solutions on how we deal with it, and create better leaders that can flow even in the face of challenges that they're going to face because every project has a challenge, no matter what. There's no such thing as a perfect project because every project has its challenges that you have to overcome. The question is, do you have the tools necessary to overcome them? Justin Smith [12:57] I love your comment about communication. When we talk to project managers about communication, or when we serve our project managers, we get a lot of that same feedback that the different forms of communication are real challenges. You've got kind of that vertical communication inside a company. How well is the strategic intent being communicated up and down the org chart so that the project manager understands why the expectations are what they are? What are the goals of the project and why are they the goals? And then horizontally across teams when it comes to resource planning, how well are project managers inside an organization communicating with each other about the competing needs? And then we've got that upward and outward communication. How well are project managers pushing their needs up to the people above them inside the organization? And how well are they reaching out to the client and gathering the information that they need? I think somewhere along the way, the AEC field, and I'm speaking specifically about engineers, and I feel as though I'm entitled to do that as one, we confused communication with being good with language. And I think communication is really about understanding and being understood. It's not about proper sentence structure. And I think that's one of those areas where we see a real struggle. We ask project managers a lot about their preferred method of communication and we often get feedback that written communication is their preference. And when probed a little deeper about why it is your preference, it's often, it gives me the greatest amount of time to sit and think about what I want to say but it is purely one directional communication. It's not about being understood. It's purely about information, declaration if you will. So communication, huge challenge, and I don't know where it started but I have communication challenges in my own life and I’d like to think I'm decent at it. So I think to some degree, everybody deals with it.

Randy Wilburn [15:04] Yeah, absolutely. Namely, I can think of the communication challenges that I have with my wife. And for those of you that are married or thinking about getting married, trust me, the fun is just starting. I think that's the first place that it starts in the home, and then it grows out from there. So, tell me just a little bit about this project management

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