Communication Excellence in Project Management

Good article in HuffPost Business about beating task saturation with operational elasticity. I didn't know the actual names of these two terms but, I certainly know feeling of being overwhelmed with tasks and not having the organizational resources to lighten the load of too many tasks.

Task saturation can lead to employees shutting down or hyper-focusing on a single task. Task saturation can not only harm employees, it can destroy organizations.

"Task saturated employees may often start to shut down and channelize on one problem. . . . Some channelize to a point where they are dropping some of the most important elements that can keep your jet in the air or in business, keep your business alive. Agility is lost and if an issue comes up and is not in the channel they are dealing with at that point in time, they are going to ignore it. . . . With zero to minimal operational elasticity you often find teams having high stress levels, pushing back, starting to take more time off, basically - shutting down. As operational elasticity decreases, performance decreases and executional errors increase."

There are five ways to increase operational elasticity and prevent task saturation:

1. Build a pipeline of talent.

2. Set clear expectations and have frequent performance debriefs.

3. Establish agility in the organization.

4. Recognize employees for their work and contributions.

5. A coherent, consistent, and communicated strategic narrative.

Task elasticity may be more of a problem for project teams because of the heavy schedule and resource constraints. In the above list, there are three methods in which communication helps to build operational elasticity. Good project managers already know to set clear expectations, recognize project team members, and deliver a compelling [project] strategy narrative.

So, what does operational elasticity look like in project teams?