Different Stakeholders, Different Communications?

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

  Communications Management  

To make a sweeping generalization, I hate sweeping generalizations! So, when I hear things like, “You have to keep it high level with executives” or “Leaders don’t care about the details,” I want to jump in and challenge those statements (even though I understand the underlying sentiments).

However, project managers are increasingly being exposed to business leaders, and they must communicate with those leaders in a number of different ways—whether specific or generalized. How do they do that effectively?

To address this requires some of those generalizations that I dislike so much. So, let’s acknowledge up front that every individual is different, and that project managers need to tailor their messages (and how those messages are delivered) to the needs of each individual. With that understanding, we can make some reasonably safe assumptions about a number of aspects of leadership communications.

Focus on their focus
We have to start by determining exactly who we’re talking about. As project managers are expected to become bigger contributors to the achievement of business outcomes, they have two categories of additional communication needs:

1. Different communication areas with existing stakeholders: The sponsor and customer representative are prime examples of this category. They have always been stakeholders …

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