It’s Not About You

Craig is based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and has worked with ProjectManagement.com for the last six years developing the various HEADWAY processes (Project, Change and Portfolio). He has hosted a series of webinars and is a business intelligence subject matter expert.

  Communications Management   Risk Management   Stakeholder Management   Talent Management  

I recently completed Phase 1 of my project and, in my eyes, I didn’t do as good of a job as I had hoped I would. I wanted to engage the many stakeholders quickly and communicate with them throughout the project. The decisions I made that supported communications on the project had mixed results and offered me some really good lessons going forward. I would like to share some of those lessons with you.

First, some background. My project, entitled “The People Project” was initiated (in part) to identify the key factors that will help the company meet its 2015 strategic targets set. The objective is to ensure that the right people are in place with the right tools, training and processes that will be key to support the business moving forward. As project manager, I have been leading a diverse project team of about 50 people on a project to better understand the current state of the business before we move to the next steps. For the most part, Phase 1 was a success--and it opened many people’s eyes to the challenges of recruiting and retaining employees in a tighter job market.

I am new to my company, having only been brought on in August 2011 to manage this project. My first task was to develop a charter for the project and a communications approach that would meet the needs of the project’s stakeholder group.

My response to this …

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