So, you want to know if you have what it takes to be a successful AV project manager.It’s time you performed a self-assessment of your skills. Being aware of your strengths and weaknesses is important not only to improve your organizational behaviour, but to build leadership capacity as well.
When you know your maximum potential as a project manager, it’s easier to develop best practices that increase your AV company’s overall performance. Of course, it’s easier to determine your potential when you know the key steps to succeed as a project manager. So, here are our top tips for how to proceed.
Your Organizational Skills Determine Consistency
Want to know the best way to step up your game regarding the quality of your AV projects? Hone your organizational skills—they’re the key to ensuring your projects are always top-notch in both the installation category and the administration category.
On any given day in your position as AV project manager, you will be juggling multiple deadlines, several work orders, and invoices from freelance technicians. In addition, you’ll be supervising equipment delivery, scheduling stakeholder meetings, and more. When you’re a meticulous organizer, both in the time management and admin capacity, the chances are high that you’ll complete more projects at a high-performance rate.
There are significant advantages afforded to you when you have proficient organizational skills. One way you can be proactive about improving these skills is to regularly research tips to excel as an AV project manager. Seeing as you’re reading this blog, you’re already on top of that!
Being a Superior Collaborator
To say AV projects are driven by collaboration is an understatement. As a manager, you’re keenly aware of the fact that nothing will get done if you don’t collaborate effectively with stakeholders, your fellow executives, and technicians. At every stage of a project, you and your AV team should be crystal clear about your roles onsite and how you can best contribute to the greater good of the project.
To be a superior collaborator, you need to be a superior communicator. Team-building and on-site cooperation are facilitated by strong communication (both orally and in writing). You must make certain your stakeholders and technicians know what the milestones are for the project in question.
Being a good communicator also means being able to provide all the information and tools needed to complete a project. Your stakeholders need milestone updates to approve or offer suggestions for the installation process, and your technicians need schematics and project plan documents to implement systems to the order.
Attaining Flexibility
Lastly, project managers must have strategies in place to attain greater worker flexibility. In other words, you need fail safe plans to avoid slow work seasons. Some of the best strategies to harness in today’s gig economy are to hire more freelancers and to take on more international projects. When you hire more freelancers, you decrease your company’s yearly overhead.
In addition, when you can operate both locally and on a global scale, you’ll be capable of expanding your AV company’s brand internationally. This is more easily achieved when you have access to an AV freelance marketplace. Such market places have a target audience of skilled technicians and an infrastructure in place to ensure you can hire them at fair and competitive rates.
There are also a host of tools on an AV freelance marketplace for project admin and communication, like work orders and invoicing, as well as a message centre for requesting and receiving milestone updates. With such tools and freelancers at your disposal, your success and survival as an AV project manager are assured!