The Importance of Heartbeat 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  

I often think that communication effectiveness has very little to do with the way a message is phrased, the way that it is delivered, or the timing of its delivery.

I know that sounds weird given all of the communication models that we have been subjected to over the years, but what I mean is that “bad” versions of all those things can be overcome by strong relationships. In a project context, that means relationships among team members—and particularly between the team members and the project manager.

Project managers know that they need to not only develop those relationships, but also maintain them. That can be harder when some or all of the team is remote. Fully or partially distributed teams are here to stay; their success through the pandemic has convinced a lot of organizations to continue the model, and that requires changes to how those teams are managed.

When a team is collocated, relationship management can be almost automatic. Simply walking past a cubicle or office, chatting in the line for coffee, or sharing a conversation in the elevator serves to ensure relationships don’t erode. But none of those things happen with remote team members, so PMs have to make more of a conscious effort.

That’s particularly true with team members or stakeholders whose engagement is only required for certain aspects of the work, or during a …

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