Communication Excellence in Project Management

One-hundred and forty-one years ago, a charismatic but, vain leader made a bad decision that cost him his life and (almost) all the lives of the people who served under him. General Armstrong Custer decided to fight a force of 2,500+ Indian warriors with only 210 men under his command. John Hollon, well-known HR guru, has argued that we should memorialize June 25th as a cautionary warning of the perils of bad management.

What made Custer's decision so wrong? According to Hollon, five factors:

1. Refusing to listen to others.
2. Arrogance.
3. Didn't focus on the goal.
4. His opponent had a better strategy AND people that could be trusted to execute the strategy.
5. Bad luck.

Personally, I am not sure that the fifth factor wasn't just a natural result of the first four factors. Even so, when I've seen projects go off track and even ultimately fail, I bet you could trace one or more reasons back to one or more these factors.

As a project manager, take time on Saturday to reflect on Custer's Last Stand and think of how you can prevent your current project from being your last stand.

Recently finished Caroline Webb's How to Have a Good Day: Harness the Power of Behavioral Science to Transform Your Working Life. In this book, Ms. Webb shares the latest neuroscience findings to help you become more personally productive and work better with co-workers.

One piece of advice that I found especially useful for project teams was the "discover-defend axis." The idea is to shift people's behavior from being defensive to being open to discovery. The key is to build a safe place where people can freely explore without feeling the threat of loss or failure.

I've seen this with project teams where project managers have created a culture of defensiveness (often unintentionality).  By intentionality creating a culture of discovery, project managers can realize greater innovation and productivity from their project teams. There are some great strategies that can project managers build a great culture for themselves and their teams.

According to a recent article in the Harvard Business review, "Research shows that our brains think of companies not as objects but as people. Every time someone engages with your brand, they are asking you: 'So tell me about your yourself.'”

The author, Mark Bonchek, advances the idea of the strategic narrative which is designed to "creat[e] a context of human connection, collaborat[e] around a shared purpose, and [connect] with the company’s DNA." A strategic narrative is how people connect with the company on an emotional level.

This led me to think of how strategic narrative can be used by project managers to advance their projects. When you examine the definition of strategic narrative, you can see that it aligns closely with the definition of a project vision. So, in a sense, a good project vision should be a good story because it serves the same purpose as a strategic narrative. When team members connect emotionally to the project, then the project manager has the full attention and engagement of the project team.

An exercise that I use in my project management communication course is to have the students pick a cognitive bias from the Wikipedia list of cognitive biases. I have the student explain the cognitive bias and then ask how they could spot this cognitive bias in someone else. Then, I ask the student to explain how to neutralize the cognitive bias so that the student can communicate effectively despite the cognitive bias.

For example, imagine that a project sponsor has the “planning fallacy” cognitive bias. So, when communicating project deadlines to this sponsor, how does a student give a realistic estimate without the sponsor pushing for more optimistic (and difficult to achieve) deadlines? I have the student roleplay various communication strategies and have the other students critique the strategies. I believe it is a great learning experience for future project managers.

How do you deal with cognitive biases? Not only with stakeholders and project team members but your cognitive biases? Are you teaching your project team members to recognize and work around their cognitive biases when communicating?

Just finished an excellent book on how to rethink failure. In Matthew Syed's book, Black Box Thinking: Why Most People Never Learn from Their Mistakes - But Some Do, he explains how aviation's approach to learning from failure made flying one of the safest industries on the planet.In contrast, how medicine approaches failure has led to medical accidents being a major hazard to patients.

In aviation, accidents and errors are treated as learning opportunities. This is why the black box exists; to collect telemetric data and cockpit conversations to be used in investigations. As Syed points out, there is no stigma attached to error (unless there was clearly negligence by the flight crew) but a focus on never repeating the mistake again.

Whereas, in the medical field, error is stigmatized which encourages doctors and nurses to hide mistakes and shift blame to external events or even to the patient. Syed recounts some shocking statistics on the dangers posed by doctors and nurses refusing to learn from their mistakes.

I found Syed's chapters on cognitive dissonance to be especially useful. Some interesting ideas on how to encourage black box thinking in teams. The key is to redefine failure from something to be feared to an opportunity to grow. In fact, Syed spends a good deal of time on the merits of the growth mindset.

This is a great read for project managers on how to encourage project team members to foster a growth mindset and learn from project risks.