PM-Mastery

Mastering the Art of Stress-Free Project Management with Udit Kana

• Walt Sparling • Season 1 • Episode 51

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 Discover the transformative power of project management with Udit Khanna, a wizard of workflow hailing from Toronto, Canada, as he unravels the secrets of a stress-free approach to executing projects. Udit's invaluable insights promise to guide you through the complexities of project management with ease and finesse. Whether you're just stepping onto the path of project leadership or honing your existing skills, Udit's tales of personal and professional development will shed light on the potent mix of self-direction and strategic use of social media. Throughout the episode, he shares his tactics for filtering through the digital noise to unearth valuable knowledge that can catapult your learning journey to new heights.

 

Embark on a captivating exploration of selecting the right project management tools and adapting them mid-flight as we navigate the ever-evolving landscape of project methodologies. Just like a craftsman carefully chooses their tools, we delve into the significance of picking the right instrument, whether MS Project or Jira, depending on the project's cadence. Udit doesn't stop there; he also opens up about his side projects, revealing the platforms where he shares his content and the personal mantras that fuel his continuous growth. His journey since arriving in Canada is a testament to perseverance and a beacon for anyone striving to carve out a successful career in project management. 

 Join us for an episode brimming with actionable wisdom and the inspiration to elevate your project management game.


 Favorite Tool(s):

  • The one most appropriate for the task
 Quotes:

  • "The only thing that is impossible is what you don't try". - Udit Khanna
 Links:

 PMI Talent Triangle: Technical /Ways of Working - Leadership/Power Skills - Strategy/Business Acumen (Learn More)

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Intro/Outro:

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. Now here's your host, walt Sparling.

Walt Sparling:

Welcome everybody to the current edition of PM Mastery, and today I have with me Udit Kana. Did I get that right? You did Awesome. All right, welcome to the show. Glad to have you on.

Udit Khanna:

Thanks for having me, Walt.

Walt Sparling:

I want to start out with our normal. Tell us a little bit about yourself as an individual.

Udit Khanna:

I'm a son, a brother and a husband and currently working as a program manager, and I live in Toronto. It's one of the most populous city in Canada and apparently one of the most warmest, I think, since the last few weeks. So this time is the first time I see it's like minus nine, but yeah, previously it was much better.

Walt Sparling:

So yeah, the weather has been insane up north.

Udit Khanna:

And just next week, next Wednesday, it's supposed to be again plus four. So I'm not complaining about the weather, I'm just highlighting what's going on right now Heatwave, exactly.

Walt Sparling:

All right, so Canada it's cool up there. And now, how long have you been in Canada?

Udit Khanna:

Over six years now. I moved here back in fall 2017. And I didn't move right here in Toronto. I moved to Winnipeg, manitoba, if you know about that place.

Walt Sparling:

It's in Canada. That's all I know.

Udit Khanna:

It's hard of Canada. Hard of Canada.

Walt Sparling:

Yeah, okay, so tell us a little bit about your job. What is it that you do so?

Udit Khanna:

I'm a program manager for a tech company and my role is to work with the product teams to deliver the software products we sell directly to the consumer. So people go online and they subscribe and they buy from our company website through various portal web, android app, ios app and the web. So I lead these teams that produce those different products. These are software products and we sell them to our customers. In addition to that, I started my. I founded my own gig as well, which I named as practical project management, where my focus is to get work done and make project management less stressful, because when I got into project management, or even before I wanted to get into project management, I heard the notion that project management is really stressful. When I started doing it over the years, I realized it's not stressful and it's not supposed to be stressful. And the only caveat to that is if you're doing it right, if you know what to do, project manager's job is not stressful. I'll pause there.

Walt Sparling:

Yeah, I don't want to get into a debate.

Udit Khanna:

Let that, let that sink in.

Walt Sparling:

Okay, I agree that your job is definitely easier if you do it right. There are some, I think, circumstances with environments, companies, stakeholders, that can make it stressful, exactly.

Udit Khanna:

And if you know how to deal with those situations, have those difficult conversations. Yeah, you would not be stressed and you would just take it as something business as usual.

Walt Sparling:

So, program manager, technical how do you keep up? Now, you've been doing this a while, but there's always opportunities to learn and grow and, like you said, you're sharing information with other people and helping them with practical project management. So I would assume that some of that is your self-development on your own. So how do you do that?

Udit Khanna:

And before I dive into the answer, I'll just give you some background. For most of my early life and I like after 18 and up to 25, I'd relied heavily on others to tell me what to do and how to do and think about my career. But, as I said, 25 years onward, I was like no, I need to take back charge of my career, my life, the way I do things, the way I see work and what I want, what I see myself like 10 years, 15 years from now. And that's where I took charge and, as you said, like personal development and learning, that's where it all comes in. And I was able to take charge of it because I made a decision, conscious decision, that I'm going to do it this way and over the years, it changed the way we consume information.

Udit Khanna:

Right now, you know, we are more virtual. We all have smartphones, we have Instagram, linkedin, all the other social media platforms and where I focus these days to get my learning is, of course, linkedin is one of the spot I go to. The other one I found really helpful is YouTube. Anything you need to know, you can go there and you can learn, like video editing, creating a project plan or whatsoever you want to learn, you go over to LinkedIn and you can learn. And even like I like to cook, so I like to prepare my meals on my own, so I would go online and see how to perfectly cook a juicy chicken breast. So that's a really good place that I heavily rely on for my learning.

Udit Khanna:

Another thing is Instagram. That's what I like as well for learning, and the real challenge with these social media platforms or, in fact, any information you are any learning is you need to see where it's coming from, because there are good books and there are not so good books that you can read. Similarly, on LinkedIn, instagram, youtube, there are content that's good versus not so good. So I try to wet these content piece of content before I consume and see what's more relevant to me and the situation I'm in. And that's what I advise everyone else as well, because I'm also content creator, so I might be appropriate for someone and not so appropriate for someone else's situation. So whatever you see out there, take it with a grain of salt and that's what I do personally and that's what I recommend.

Walt Sparling:

Okay, I've noticed. I definitely agree with you on YouTube, linkedin, I do Udemy as well. Starting to see I think mainly because of the shorts I'm seeing a lot more on Instagram, more than I've seen in probably the last couple of years. Shorts have become very popular on all the platforms, but those are some great, great resources. So we were talking a little bit earlier. You're talking about how you're helping people do practical project management and if you do things right, it won't be stressful. But with every job, there's the potential for challenges. What about in what you do? I mean, you have two things going on you have your job and then you have your side gig Somewhere in there. There's got to be a challenge.

Udit Khanna:

So the biggest challenge right now I'll talk about my business side of thing is the first thing is last year I started and I really focused on speaking to more and more people. I spoke. I took more than 50, 60 one-on-one calls with various individuals across the globe to get a sense of even the skill or what I'm trying to coach or trying to teach. Is it even valuable? Does even anyone cares what I'm doing? And after doing these calls I realized that by the end of the hour I would have the person on the other side of the call highly pumped and motivated. And they came in and I realized the person would DM you or message you or book a call only when they're at a lowest point in their life. Someone who's doing really great would not message you or book a call. Someone who's at really low point thinks that all the options have been exhausted. That's when they take that step and book a call. And if or when after the call, that person is highly motivated and you can see it from their face and the message they send you afterwards. That's what tells me that the information I shared with them is valuable.

Udit Khanna:

And my challenge then comes is I would be lying if I say I'm not doing my side as little for money. I'm not doing any charity, I'm doing it for money. I'll be honest about that, and I need to monetize that somehow, because I have to pay bills too, and, as we were talking initially about the inflation, the salaries and all those stuff, it's never going to keep up to the market and I have bigger goals. Let's say that, and I'm more ambitious about that. So right now, my biggest challenge is to really how to monetize that and make it work for me as well as for the people I'm offering service to.

Walt Sparling:

So that's great. That is one of my goals this year. And did you attend the recent LinkedIn live where they were talking about consulting and coaching and training? It was a panel.

Udit Khanna:

I did yeah.

Walt Sparling:

So that is a struggle that a lot of people deal with is not just monetizing but setting the right rates and figuring out your customers and what they're willing to pay Exactly. But yeah, if you're investing your time in something, obviously you'd like to get some money back. Your time is worth money.

Udit Khanna:

Exactly.

Walt Sparling:

So another thing we touched on before we got started on the interview was tools, and we chatted a little bit about what that means. It means different things to different people, so one of my standard questions is what are some of your favorite tools? So what is your take on tools and what can you share?

Udit Khanna:

You know, Walt, this is one of my favorite topic when we talk about tools. So you see, I'm kind of adjusting my seats so that I can get getting in.

Udit Khanna:

Yeah, so you know tools. When we talk about tools I don't Every time we talk about it. I remember one of my professors in my MBA and I took a finance course and she was teaching that course and she she changed my outlook of how I look at tools. So, as a project manager or program manager, there are several different tools that we can use and we use every day. I See all those tools in a toolbox, like a, a plumber or electrician. They all have toolbox right. They have different tools for different purposes. If they want to drive a nail, they'll use a hammer. If they want to snap a wire, they'll use a plier or a cutter. And similarly for project managers Like I don't, I don't have favorites, I have preferences, but I don't have favorite I Use the tool that I need for that job. So I'll give you an example. So when I'm working on a project, that's really gonna be waterfall and I know like we have a definite start, definitely finished. These are certain tasks and once this is done, it's the end of the road. We shake hands and we depart from there. That's really waterfall approach.

Udit Khanna:

I would prefer using MS project or smart sheets, where I can create a simple Gantt chart with all their core information and Call it, call it done. On the other hand, if I'm working on a program where it's ongoing Every V, every quarter, we would have a certain goal and we'll keep it. Trading will be keeping, adding bugs, more scope, there will be changes. Then it's more of an agile kind of a setup and then I Tend to use a different tool. I've used Mondaycom, I've used a Jira, which is very popular in this space. So I would see which tool works best for that application or that Problem at hand or that project. So I have made myself comfortable with all. These various tools will be in the marketplace and I see them all in my toolbox. I would pull out whichever I need and I'll use it, and I've also done this. I'll be. I'll be open to admit that I started off using with one tool. I noticed that this isn't working out great. Then I would swap that with another tool.

Walt Sparling:

Okay, I like that approach. It's not just Favorites, it's what is appropriate for the task at hand.

Udit Khanna:

Exactly, and you know Microsoft. One note that comes default on most of the windows be every Windows PC, right? So I would start off sometimes by using that. Then I would move over to something else, maybe an Excel spreadsheet, smart sheet, ms project, and then maybe back to that. So depending upon, as I said, tools in my toolbox. So Like electrician would use it, plumber would use it. I also have a toolbox with all these various tools and I would use it as as appropriate for that situation.

Walt Sparling:

Okay, I like that. All right tools challenges, program manager, helping PMs with practical project management. Why, why do you do this?

Udit Khanna:

So let's go back. I think it's almost a year. Let's go back a year from now. This was back in late 2022, early 2023.

Udit Khanna:

I was meeting a lot of people this was after COVID things opened up. I was meeting a lot of like relatives, friends, colleagues, and I noticed no one was talking about like self-development, progression, growth, money, and I wanted to have these conversations. I was having those conversations with myself. I was reading books, consuming content. I couldn't find a place to share my ideas, thoughts, and then I realized, a few months down the road, that you cannot just give anyone an advice, you cannot share certain things with just anyone, because they would not accept it, someone would not understand it and that just looks inappropriate.

Udit Khanna:

And I had to find a way to kind of bring out my ideas, thoughts and I found that in social media and I started off by writing posts on LinkedIn and that was well received and I could bring it out there. That's where I started. Of course, I would be lying if I don't say that I want to make money out of it, because I'm putting in time and I know the information I gained over the years is really helpful for someone who's starting in their career In the first five to seven years, I can really help that person, and I've also helped people do the same with the information, because if I had certain piece of information back then, I would have not had those scars and bruises the steep ones I have now. So, similarly, I'm also hungry for learning because, as I said, I am progressing towards building my business where I coach, train, consult, and this is a new space for me. I have less than one year of experience in it, but there are certain pros who've been doing this for a decade.

Walt Sparling:

It's clear that you're driven and you have a goal and a purpose, and I'm betting that you get enjoyment out of and I think we talked about that a little bit earlier the energy levels that the people you work with when they call you, and then, after you've spoken, how different it is. So you're making an impact and that's worth something.

Udit Khanna:

And that's what I realized More than anything. Someone like we all been there right Every day, or this happens right, we have some time of some type of a breakdown, we feel really at the bottom and then if you speak to someone, you get certain ideas, you just Even though you know within yourself that this is what you should do, but if someone tells you that hey, go on this path, try it and test it, use by most of the folks, and if you use it, you might be able to get that too, so that light at the end of the tunnel is really powerful and I see an echo. I was speaking to my mom this is like a few months back and I was saying, telling my mom that what I'm doing is I'm not teaching project management, I'm showing them light at the end of the tunnel. Their struggles, the problems can go away if they know how to do that specific thing.

Walt Sparling:

Keeping up you have. Why don't we talk a little bit about your side gig? I know you mentioned a little bit, but do you want to go in any more detail about, like, maybe we're gonna share your links to your LinkedIn and we're gonna share any other things that you have channels? If you have a YouTube channel, we'll share that. Do you wanna give a little blurb about what you do and how best to find you? I'll make sure it goes in the notes, but you can get it out there on the podcast.

Udit Khanna:

Sure, so the best way to find me is I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on Instagram, I'm on TikTok and I'm on YouTube as well. So, yeah, if you search my name, you should be able to find it, and I know I'm not that popular at this time that I would be top on the list. So I think the best way would be to go through the link in the description that Walt would post in the audio and on the LinkedIn, and you can go and find me there.

Walt Sparling:

And yes. No, I was just gonna say. As you can imagine, I'm kind of a project management fan, so I have seen you on multiple platforms and that's one of the reasons that I sought you out to bring you on here. So yeah, I've seen various videos that you've done.

Udit Khanna:

Thank you and anyone who's watching this and has seen my content. I really appreciate you giving me your precious time and going through that piece of content. So there's a lot of effort that goes behind it and, yeah, it's one of the amazing thing. When I started, I didn't realize that creating content would be that fulfilling and help you gain confidence and build up your skillset, and I'm realizing it every day. And when people reach out to me, they wanna speak to me and they keep me as highly regarded person. That really makes me feel good.

Walt Sparling:

Well, one of the things that I noticed in your content is the energy, so that is one thing I remember.

Udit Khanna:

It means a lot, Walt, you saying that.

Walt Sparling:

Good deal. Well, we'll share all your links in the show notes. The one question that we have left is did you know, Do you have a? Did you know that you can share?

Udit Khanna:

I will, and it might not be surprising, because I touched a bit on this in the starting of this podcast, and that was you have to look after yourself. No one is going to take care of you. Even if they tell you they are taking care of you or looking after you, they are lying. An exception lies to your parents, your family. No one else in this world outside your house is going to look after you, and people will tell you at work, at school, in the gym, wherever you go, that they'll take care of you, but no one would. So what you need to do is you need to take care of yourself and expect the other person to take care of themselves, not yourself.

Walt Sparling:

Okay, good advice.

Udit Khanna:

Yeah, and why I say that is I've learned it the hard way and, yeah, nothing is impossible. The only thing that's impossible is what you don't try. And I say this because when I came to Canada, I didn't know what is possible, what I could do, but I kept faith in myself that I'll do the right thing and I'll take on the challenge and I'll keep working on it until I get it. So what I imagined I would get in 2024, in 2017, when I came here, I could not imagine I would be here. So I gave myself a stretch call that if in those six years I could be here, that I could never imagine what my next six years look like. So I need to give myself a stretch call and see where I end up.

Walt Sparling:

Good deal. So this has been. I know we chatted a little bit back and forth about the format so we ended up on just doing an interview, but in the future maybe nice to have you back and maybe talk about a topic that you help people with, so we can dive into something Absolutely Sound like something you'd be willing to do Absolutely, walt, absolutely. Awesome. Well, I appreciate you coming on and, for everyone else who'd listened, I wanna thank you for listening to this episode and we'll see you on the next episode of PMS3.

Udit Khanna:

Thank you. Thank you, walt, for listening.

Intro/Outro:

Thanks for listening to the PM Mastery podcast at wwwpm-masterycom. Be sure to subscribe in your podcast player. Until next time, keep working on your project. You, you you you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you you you, you, you, you you.