PM-Mastery

Interview with Stephanie Tsacogianis: On Transitioning Roles and Exceling in Project Management

• Walt Sparling • Season 1 • Episode 38

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In this episode:
Ever wondered how a surgical tech can transition into a highly successful project manager? Join me for an enlightening conversation with Stephanie Tsacogianis, a project manager in sports medicine hailing from the Greater Boston Area. Boasting a diversified 14-year span in the healthcare industry, Stephanie brings to the table her expertise in effective leadership, collaboration and project management.

As we navigate through our discourse, we touch upon pertinent issues such as process improvement initiatives, the significance of a resilient backup plan, as well as the power of mentorship. Our conversation is full of valuable insights, practical advice and a dash of inspiration, making it an episode not to be missed.

As we delve deeper, we discuss leadership book recommendations and the potential of Excel learning courses. Stephanie shares her experience with the quadrant note-taking system, the importance of patience during a role transition, and the upcoming event - Knights and Ladies of the Roundtable- which focuses on effective communication. 

This episode is a must-listen for all project managers and those intending to join the field. Tune in and let Stephanie's journey inspire your own.

Check out valuable links to books and additional resources below.

Favorite Learning Resources:

  • LinkedIn
  • Udemy
  • Podcasts
  • Leadership Books

Books Mentioned:

Additional Links and Resources:

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Stephanie:

I learned a lot from this podcast. Actually, the other day I listened to the episode where I couldn't find it on Spotify but I was able to find it on your actual website. It was the one where you interviewed a gentleman His name was Derek in Construction Project Management and you guys were talking about because you'd mentioned before oh, I have an episode where we talk about what's my work back and I listened to that episode I just was like whoa, because it's all about being prepared. It really is, and I just found and I found on LinkedIn the work back. I just thought that episode was brilliant. I was like wow, this is really great, tangible advice that people can take right away.

Intro:

Welcome to the PM Mastery podcast. This podcast is all about helping you master your project management skills by sharing tips, tricks, tools and training to get you to the next level, while sharing the stories of other project managers on their journey in project management. And now here's your host, walt Sparney.

Walt:

So welcome everybody to the current edition of PM Mastery, and today I have with me Stephanie Chiquiannis. Did I say that right?

Stephanie:

Yes.

Walt:

All right. So Stephanie is from the Greater Boston Area, she's in healthcare and she is currently a project manager in sports medicine. But I'm going to let Stephanie tell us a little bit more about her herself.

Stephanie:

Thank you all for having me on. I really appreciate being here. So yeah, so I've been in the healthcare industry for over 14 years now. I started off as a surgical tech, so I was the person handing off the instruments to the surgeon for a few years. Then I went on to medical device procurement, so I ordered all the medical devices for three endoscopy units and then after that I became an operations manager in the same unit at a large Boston hospital National Rural Hospital and before I transitioned to my current role as project manager at National Brigham, Okay, and in that role, what do you do?

Stephanie:

At National Brigham. I work on the PMO in sports medicine. So our PMO purpose was to integrate all the sports medicine hospital departments together and we're a part of all through Massachusetts, in Southern New Hampshire, and we have a lot of initiatives that are surrounded around patient access. So one of the initiatives that we have implemented about a year and a half ago now is we have a call center. So if someone gets injured, they call this one number and the agents will get the patient to the appropriate provider in the location closest to their home, so they don't have to call several different entities. So it's great. And then we work with pro teams and we just have. We have several other initiatives that we're working on just to help athletes get back to playing the sports they love.

Walt:

And if I recall from your notes, they are around 70 some thousand people in the network that.

Stephanie:

Yes, all through the National Brigham Network. Yes, correct.

Walt:

Cool and was talking to you earlier, and you are definitely a constant learner, which is something we always say is a good thing. You've got a bachelor, or you graduated with a bachelor's degree, and then you moved on and just recently got your MBA, so that's, that's exciting. You're obviously passionate about this. You've been in the medical industry in various positions for a long time. Why why do you do it?

Stephanie:

Well, I have a passion for taking on leadership roles and I love seeing things go from you know start to finish, and one of my first projects I took on was a surgical tech. It was a process improvement initiative and ever since then I've just been very excited about jumping in there and, as a medical device inventory inventory specialist, I had taken lead on implementing quite a bit of new technology and implementing new devices and ensuring staff was comfortable with the, with the new devices, and I really just felt I just like the collaboration of working with all different departments and bringing people together and seeing something come to fruition. It's very exciting for me. And another thing I love, too, is working with stakeholders that I can really put myself in their shoes. As an operations manager, I understand when a when you know an operation lead is super, you know busy they might. What might be on the top of my to-do list may not be like that's my top priority might not be there.

Stephanie:

So I think I have a good idea of how to connect and how to understand everyone, what, what might be their top priority or how can I help them and set those expectations so we can work together for the common goal.

Walt:

And those are great PM skills. You got some intuition there. You can place, place yourself in their shoes, so you're willing to listen, which is great, and your diverse background helps in the role, so that's good. And one of the things you mentioned was I believe it was an initiative for process improvement.

Stephanie:

Yes, yes, we had a couple of those. The Indospe unit I worked in a lot of. It was just we worked with flow charts and implemented new processes. We also, if you know, say, our electronic, electronic medical device record system, our EMR system, goes down. How does the show go on Like? How do you keep on doing that? So a lot of things like that having the force to support the staff members to ensure that you know when things go out of plan. We still have that backup plan, we can still take care of our patients.

Walt:

No, it's great. You have a backup plan and a flow If this, then that, so you know what to do. That's awesome. That's like dealing with your project risks this could go wrong, how do we deal with it? All right, one of the things you had mentioned was mentorship, and that's a popular topic with myself. I love mentorship. Tell us a little bit about your passion on mentorship.

Stephanie:

Yeah. So I've received great mentorship even starting on my support staff role the surgical technologist, like I said, the leadership in the endoscopy unit I was working in at Mass General Hospital. They really saw that, they saw potential in me and they appreciated my expertise and they had the ability at the time to take me out of the numbers and help me with project planning, execution, everything to set me up to be a project manager, which I really appreciate, Because especially with staffing shortages, it's not so easy to take clinical staff and show them the ropes and even to help them obtain those administrative skills. It's not easy when you don't necessarily work at a computer every day and then you're leading a project. There is a little bit of a learning curve there. So I appreciate that and just some of my mentors have really taken the time to introduce me to other people, other managers, networking, really just all those introductions and having my hat just supporting me in everything that I wanted to do in terms of school or any other conferences, continuing education I felt very supported.

Walt:

That's great. I can say that in the years that I've been doing this I wouldn't be where I'm at if it weren't for some great mentors in my early years and even current. I have mentors. They may not know they're a mentor, but secretly they are to me, so that's great. I also liked you mentioned about people that are maybe not good with the administrative stuff. So I think every industry like I and where I work we have PMs that are rock solid in the field, yet they get behind a computer and they stumble. So you've got to work with them to get that part of it a little stronger. But their major plus is what they do in the field and if they are open to be a constant learner, like yourself, they can learn that stuff and balance it out All right. One of the things with that is, we've mentioned, you're a constant learner and obviously you've got your bachelor's degree, you've got your MBA, you've worked in different fields, you've had mentors help you grow. How do you personally continue to learn?

Stephanie:

I think LinkedIn is a great resource. Udemy is also wonderful. I've taken a couple classes Two of them that recently I've taken was the Visio and Microsoft Project and they really do break it down into those small videos the ones with the least of the classes that I have downloaded and I just find it very easy. You don't need to dedicate three hours. You can just do a little bit of time whenever you have time. So I really enjoy that YouTube videos. I especially love following Layla Garardi and Robert yeah.

Walt:

I think that's right.

Stephanie:

Yes, I apologize if I said their name wrong and they are absolutely wonderful. I've learned a lot from watching both their YouTube videos and I also like, so there's a couple of leadership books that I have read throughout the years, especially when I became an operations manager, that I found very helpful.

Walt:

All right, and you said two people. One was the other, one was Kevin Strafford.

Stephanie:

Yes.

Walt:

So he's great. He used to work for Microsoft. Now he's out on his own but he does a ton of stuff with Microsoft projects, google, not projects products Google and a ton of other just common technology things that people use and stumble with. He's a great teacher on that stuff and, of course, you can't help but love his cookie company that he always uses for examples. Yes, All right. So Udemy is great. You mentioned Microsoft Project.

Walt:

When I started my role my current role I had never used Microsoft Project. It was never a requirement in anything I did. So I had a client, a stakeholder, basically, that we were working for them and they had a much larger project that we were part of and he said I need to see a project schedule for this from you. I need a Microsoft project schedule. So I put it off and put it off, put it off and finally I get on Udemy. I looked at two or three different ones. I found one. It was three hours. I went three hours. I sat down one night, went through the course, worked a little side by side, great, went back the next day, stayed late at night, spent another three hours creating this full blown schedule, took it to the meeting the next day, and so within two days I delivered this awesome project schedule. Thanks to Udemy.

Stephanie:

That's amazing.

Walt:

So it's. There's some great stuff out there. I still use Udemy for a lot of different things. You've talked about your favorite places to go and learn, talked a little bit about your background, so what are some of the challenges that you have faced or currently face in your roles?

Stephanie:

I think one is just changing specialties. Even though I'm still in healthcare. There's a huge learning curve going from one specialty to the other. I think also I knew the stakeholders very well where I worked before. Now it was just one department. Now it's working with stakeholders at all different entities and again I just really focus on building those relationships. It's challenging, especially remotely. I do try to go to as many in-person meetings, walkthroughs, and it's great when I meet them in person and I think they like meeting us too in person. But by making that connection remotely it takes time and on top of the learning curve of the new specialty. But now I've been in this role for a year, so I'm definitely feeling more comfortable. I think people need to be really patient and not be so hard on themselves when you're changing careers or even specialties. I think these things just take time and it's hard to fast forward and get up to speed like you were in your old role. It's hard.

Walt:

Imposter syndrome. Yes, so yeah, a lot of people want to hit the ground running and they just think, oh my god, why can't I figure this out? It's like you will. Some companies I know ours included we have a very long onboarding process and we welcome in and we go all right. So we're going to get you started slow. You're going to do some trainings, you're going to shadow some other PMs and in a month I just hired someone in there like, oh, yeah, I want to get going on projects. And I'm like, oh, you got months before you get a project. Oh, I'm ready. Oh, no, you're not. And then they realize it and it's like six months later they look back and they go, wow, I still got a lot to learn and I've learned so much. And it's like, yeah, it takes time to get comfortable. All right, so while you're doing all this stuff, you got to have some favorite tools that you use.

Stephanie:

Yes, I know one that I feel that I feel it comes up on every of your episodes is OneNote. It really is great. I never used it before this role and I just feel like it's life changing. It makes it so easy. I have a tab for each work stream and it just makes the organization so much quicker to take notes, find things in the pinch. I don't know what I would do without OneNote. It's incredible.

Stephanie:

The other tool that I just discovered last week, I think, through Kevin's YouTube video, was and it's been around, I think, for a couple of years, but I just discovered it was the AI coach for PowerPoint. So this is if you're practicing, it's very cool. So, if you're practicing a presentation, at the very end you record your presentation and there's a coach that every time you say the word um or uh, or you repeat a word too much, that it'll like oh, an alert will go on full distracting at first, but at the end it will tell you all these metrics of how many times you know you're repeated those words um, your, your, your voice, like your, if you're like your high pitched, your pitches, if it's going up and down too much, and a couple other things, and just you know and just to coach you so that way you can improve each time, and how long the presentation took. So I think that's really helpful.

Walt:

And what is it called?

Stephanie:

It's just um. It's in PowerPoint and there um there's a button that you click on. This is like a um AI to coach or coach coaching AI.

Walt:

I can't think of it right now, but I've never heard of that. That's awesome.

Stephanie:

It really helped me for the for the presentation. I just had it on uh Monday with 80 people and I just practiced that a few times and it was and I only had 15 minutes, so I knew I had a very limited time to do my whole presentation. So I worked on it and worked on it. I started off at 24 minutes and I got to 17 and eventually I got down to the top 15. So for anyone who's new to public speaking or just wants to improve their presentation skills, I would highly recommend using that AI tool in PowerPoint.

Walt:

I love that. I'm definitely going to make a note of that in the show notes. I've never heard of that. I know there's a lot of like new things that have been put in PowerPoint over the last few years that I have stumbled on or I've watched YouTube videos. Kevin, I think, was one. I found out about the built in uh graphics that are uh trying to think what they're called um royalty free stuff Okay.

Walt:

And and they're hidden under this other option and you go down and pick and they have characters, they have symbols, they have they have just hundreds and hundreds of of items that you can use. So yeah, I'm I'm still finding stuff and I use PowerPoint all the time. I do presentations for various groups. So that is cool and I gotta admit I don't know many people I know it's always taught. I was taught a years ago that actually rehearse a presentation. But, depending on your audience, that's a great idea, because if you have 15 minutes and then you're down at the end and you're like I got four more slides, like well, no, you should have figured out your time, so that's great. I'm glad to hear that some people are actually doing that. A couple others that you mentioned in your notes were teams and then, of course, microsoft Project. You used a lot of Teams.

Stephanie:

I do. We use Teams for our PMO, if small projects. I'll just quickly make a Teams channel. Yeah, I try to integrate it with OneNote as much as I possibly can, just to make everything seamless. But yeah, I love Teams.

Walt:

Yeah, teams I'd say Teams OneNote, outlook and PowerPoint are the four tools that I'm in every day in some manner. I have links back and forth between Outlook and OneNote and Teams. Yeah, we use the crap out of them. They're awesome. All right, we already talked a little bit about Layla. If you guys are looking for Excel type learning courses, she's got some phenomenal stuff. I actually was following up on your notes, which I want to talk to you a little bit about as your Quadrant system, but while I was there, I looked up a video on pivot tables, because that's one that I. Every time I do a pivot table, I've got to go watch a video. I don't do enough of them. I can do it like a pivot table once a month. I have not ingrained it in my brain yet. So I saw her one today 10 minutes learned pivot tables in 10 minutes. I'm going to watch that tomorrow.

Stephanie:

Yeah, we can analyze button. Sorry, that also on the top that Kevin had a video on that. It makes it super easy. It's like an AI generated, I think, new button and it also make pivot tables take two seconds. So, I think, depending on how complex your pivot table, if you just need it for something very simple, the analyze button I think that's new to Excel.

Walt:

I saw that today actually, because one of the struggles I have I do a monthly forecast for our team our whole team does and we receive pivot tables, spreadsheets, pivot tables from the accounting group and they never format it in a way that a PM can open it up and use it. So I get emails. How do I get this to where it shows my projects? This is showing business units and I need to see. I'll send them a little screenshot. Do this, do that, do that. Now I'm just, like I've said, a reminder. Soon as I get the pivot table in or the spreadsheet in, I go to the pivot table page, I modify it the way they need it, save it and then send it. So it reduces their time because forecasting is stressful enough as it is. So, kevin Layla, project teams. One note you had mentioned earlier and I don't want to lose out on it. You said you'd like some leadership books. Do you have some names?

Stephanie:

Yes, I think one I think that's very helpful is called the Managing Up. So that book is really about how to foster a good relationship with your direct manager, how trying to again trying to put yourself in someone else's shoes, how do you understand what matters to them and to you? You can show them what matters to you and you can cut it. You can have a great relationship with your manager. I thought that was very helpful because I think managing up especially as a manager yourself, if you're in middle management it can be very difficult. When you're managing a staff that's like patient-facing or customer-facing and you're also trying to create a good relationship with your manager, You're doing it all at once and you're just trying to end. Yeah, I thought that book really had some great tips. The other book was Good to Great.

Stephanie:

That one's been around for a while, but I really enjoy it. I'm trying to think of the other books. One was the five love languages, but it's the five workplace appreciation languages. Same thing it's for if you have staff members. Just like the love languages. Everyone feels appreciated in a certain way. Just like in relationship with the five love languages not everyone's same. Not everyone thinks access service is the way they should love. Just like some people, their appreciation language it could be complimenting when they're by themselves or giving them a compliment when they're around other people might be preferred. Monetary might be the only way to someone that feels appreciated. There's just so many different ways to make your direct reports feel appreciated. Figuring out how each person feels appreciated takes time, especially if you have a large group, but at the time I only had 12 direct reports and I was reading this. I try to implement some things I have learned from that book and I found it to be helpful.

Walt:

No, I like that. I've seen a couple different systems for doing that and it's very true. No one likes to be treated the same. I say treated the same, recognized the same. Some don't want any recognition and they get embarrassed and sometimes mad. I didn't really want you to say that. Others are like hey, how come you didn't talk about me? Everyone is different and, as a manager, that is a great skill to have. You'll bond much better with your team.

Stephanie:

Another one I think all project managers should read is how to win friends and influence people, because I know it's been around forever, but I've recently only read it and I just think it really still holds up for today. They made some edits to it because some things were a little bit outdated, but I feel like there's a great way to connect with your stakeholders, really understand where they're coming from. It really opened up my eyes to how to foster better relationships, so I really thought that was a good one as well.

Walt:

Yeah, I can't remember the author, but that's an oldie but a goodie and he was, I think, more. That was more for salespeople, but it was, yeah, great book, a classic, All right. So those are some good books. I'll throw in some Amazon links in the show notes so people can check them out if they haven't heard of them already. Ok, let's see. Is there any other things? We kind of covered the normal topics. We haven't got to my favorite yet, but actually I love your, did you know? So tell us what your did you know is.

Stephanie:

Sure. So I know Pickleball is very popular right now, so I just wanted to just throw this out there that Pickleball injuries results in an annual medical cost of 250 million to 500 million in a recent study. So where recreational players of Pickleball have increased by 159 percent in the past three years. I thought I just thought it would be worth mentioning just to you know you should still do it if you love it, but just to know that there's a lot, there's quite a few injuries that can be associated with Pickleball.

Walt:

Now is that? Is that like US based, or is that worldwide? Do you know?

Stephanie:

Oh, yes, I had the source came from, but I believe that was US. But I have to double check on that. I don't have the source right here, but but yes, that was a recent study.

Walt:

Yeah, it was by the Sports and Fitness Industry Association. Yes, but yeah, that'd be interesting. I know I work with a bunch of people. I work in Florida, but I have peers in the Carolinas and, oh my God, pickleball, pickleball, pickleball. And actually a couple people I know locally have taken it up and I'm like, wow, maybe I used to play racquetball a lot. I'm thinking that might be good, but now at my age I'm like I don't know, maybe, maybe I'll go and watch. I don't need any. I don't need to be part of this 250 to 500 million dollar audience there Awesome. So anything else you want to talk about?

Stephanie:

The only thing I think it's worth mentioning is that that quadrant method of note taking.

Intro:

Yes, yeah.

Stephanie:

So that was one thing that I learned from Layla A couple of weeks ago and I started implementing it. I thought it was amazing. So, basically, anything but four quadrants, so it's four, you know, looking at four squares together like a note table. And the left upper quadrant is general note. So if you're taking this is just to, if you're the type of person that, like me, would take like six pages of notes for, like, going out or meeting, writing down every single thing, this is a this is helpful to be more of an active listener.

Stephanie:

And so with the four different quadrants, the top left corner again is general notes, just things that come up that you think are worth knowing, it's worth note taking. The top right corner is questions. So this is where I come in with my questions and sometimes, depending on the meeting, that might be just where I put my agenda, things I really want to make sure that I ask or bring up to the group. The bottom left quadrant is my to do, so I know after the meeting that what I'm responsible for, and then the bottom left is the action item for others, so it also sometimes I put the decisions that were made in there too. So this way, if I am in, you know, seven Zooms in a day and I have to think and my maybe my director says, oh, like, what was the decision that was made?

Stephanie:

If you're going through all your notes it might be kind of hard to really decipher what the what was important. So I think with this four quadrant system it's really helped me, you know, actually participate in meetings, so I'm not spending so much time writing, I can participate, yeah, like it. Just it's made a huge difference. So I know Layla has a video on this that came out a few weeks ago. I think it's about just a few minutes long. I think it's worth.

Walt:

Yeah, it's seven minutes, I believe, because I watched it today and it's a good one. I now I'm curious, though. Everyone has their methods, and there's there's tried and true methods out there that people have been doing for years and trying to learn. Especially a lot of college people have to have really good note taking skills, which lends well to being a project manager. So when you do it, do you actually do it on paper?

Stephanie:

I have been doing it on paper, yes, and I think that's just because of retention, and then I, and it's because it's like the way the, the, it works so simple. Where it's the four quadrants, it's easy to retype and then just, but if it's a meeting where I don't think it's a 30 minute meeting, I don't think there's going to be much notes and I don't, I can't, I don't think I'm going to have too many to do interviews after. I will just do, I will just type it up in one note as I go. But yeah, but the writing it on paper for some meetings has been helpful.

Walt:

Yeah, for years, when I first started, I had a little black notebook. I can't even remember. I keep one in my laptop bag with me in case I go in the field or go somewhere and it's kind of an impromptu meeting, but it had a meeting topic, subject attendees and then at the bottom it had a little section that blocked off and I would create. If it was an action item, I would put a square next to it and then I knew that was something you got to check off. So it's an action item and everyone has their different ways. I'm pretty much now I'd say 90%, one note and the rest. I mingle between my little black notebook or I have teammates that I'll sometimes set in for them and run their meetings, and it'll be. They have trackers. So we have a group tracker that we use. In fact I shared it, I don't know, about a month ago out on LinkedIn, but I would go in and fill out their tracker and it's a little bit different. We don't require everybody to do their notes the same. It's up to what makes you comfortable. So there is a lot of ways.

Walt:

I think the Quadrant system is very neat. It kind of gives you that format to work with, so I did watch that. I am going to share a link to that in the show notes as well, and I'll probably put a link to, maybe, kevin's home YouTube page. He's got some great stuff out there, especially if you're trying to learn Teams or any of the Microsoft products, even the Google products. A lot of people still use Google products and I think even Layla had. I saw something on there where she did what is the Google spreadsheet called?

Stephanie:

Google Sheets.

Walt:

Maybe it is just Google Sheets, but yeah, she had a video on that as well. So good stuff. So I think, with all your learning and continuing to learn, we've got a lot of information to share with others to continue their education as well. So I appreciate you coming on and I just want to let everybody know that we I had made an announcement in LinkedIn and I think I saw you commented on it, maybe yesterday we have Knights and Ladies of the Roundtable coming up in August and it's going to be focused on communication. So I'm going to get a notice out on that here soon with the natural date. But hopefully you can attend and all the listeners can attend, and we're going to focus on communications all the pros, the cons, the dos, the don'ts. It's going to be fun.

Stephanie:

I look forward to it.

Walt:

All right. Well, thank you everybody for attending and listening in and we will see you on the next episode of PMSR.