ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE4 January 2023

How Project Managers Can Overcome Stress

Trends Wellbeing

InnovateMR’s Aamod Tyagi discusses different methods and techniques project managers can use to save time, reduce stress, and accomplish more in their daily routines.

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Effective project management is essential in the world of research and data reliability. Today, the market research industry has newly evolved technology that helps PMs save time and accomplish more in their day-to-day routine.

We must start by asking the question: are you managing projects, or are you managing stress?

According to TeoDeskproject management is one of the most stressful jobs, and the success of the project deliverables depends on the manager’s stress levels. Keys to making a successful project include:

  1. Do not stay calm – there is an urgency in the work
  2. Do not get distressed – optimal stress levels keep us motivated
  3. Stay eustressed! – Eustress, defined as normal to moderate stress, is healthy and leads to professional career development

How stress can affect your bottom line

According to a study from the Project Management Institute, increased and unmanaged stress in project managers can be detrimental to individual productivity and the capacity of an entire team. When there is too much pressure on project managers, negative emotions will surface, detracting from a goal-oriented focus. Narrowed attention spans also mean poor concentration, poor decision-making, multitasking, and limited processing of new information. 

Without intervention and a way to properly manage stress, project managers can quickly become ineffective and get burned out, leading to client dissatisfaction and, ultimately, team attrition. Not only is this incredibly unhealthy for individual team members, but it also harms your business’ potential and bottom line.

There are several products used by project managers here at InnovateMR that maximize productivity throughout the day:

An internal organization tool. InnovateMR’s proprietary dashboard, Edge, has state-of-the-art features that help PMs in their day-to-day activities. Through automation, technical connectivity, and alerts, there are almost no ongoing manual tasks, allowing the focus to be on smart and efficient work.

Edge software features:

  1. Executive Dashboard: Helps track company-level performance across the entire service organization.
  2. Leadership Dashboard: Helps team leads track individual team member performance.
  3. PM Dashboard: Helps project managers track all aspects of their projects’ progress in one place.

Templates and resources. Flight Deck is another tool that InnovateMR PMs can utilize. Flight Deck is a series of sample plans and templates that PMs can select from according to the project’s unique needs. This system is based on a variety of different factors and will set the project live automatically, manage sample, and, once the target is achieved, pause the project. Within Flight Deck, there are other products including:

      1. Traffic controller: This system is designed to determine how much sample to send into the field based on the predetermined project requirements. As part of Flight Deck’s automated product stack, this feature will control the pace of the project automatically as per the set deadline.
      2. Email alerts: PMs are alerted of significant changes via email, including:
        • Any scope change (IR, LOI, etc.)
        • A “project on hold” alert once the sampling target is achieved
        • Sample over-quotas
        • The project end date crossed

    Invest in data quality technology and train project managers to use them. InnovateMR has multiple control tools to access respondent quality in real-time and enhance data quality, making a PM’s job easier:

      1. Text Analyzer: TextAnalyzer checks open-end responses in real-time to remove gibberish, copy-paste, and non-contextual answers. The product won a 2021 Stevie Award for technology innovation.
      2. Digital Fingerprinting: An integrated tool that helps catch fraudsters based on multiple factors, including unique device IP, unique PID, mac address, browser details, etc.
      3. Advanced Red Herring Questions: InnovateMR uses a battery of red-herring questions unique to each respondent to check the respondent’s attention and credibility. However, rather than asking simple questions such as “what color is the sky?” InnovateMR also implements knowledge-based questions to ensure the correct participant is answering the survey.

    InnovateMR continues to provide Project Management Support and Tools

    With the ever-evolving technological enhancements demanded by the market research industry continually increasing, it is important to utilize technology that will make our lives easier and our work more efficient. By staying ahead of the curve and taking advantage of innovative tools, project management team leaders can do less troubleshooting and more facilitation. In addition, flexibility and adaptability will ensure that we don’t have to pause projects and can maintain consistent client delivery and satisfaction.

    Aamod Tyagi is the lead client services manager for the InnovateMR delivery team with 7+ years of experience in market research.

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