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?

If you have been in the work environment long enough, you will probably take one type of personality test or another. There is the Myers-Briggs, the DiSC, and many others. At the end of the test you end up with a letter code, color code, or some type of neatly-defined category. The idea is that if you understand your co-workers' types, then you can communicate better.

In a recent Forbes article, we have another set of types that explains why you and your boss don't communicate well. He or she might be analytical while you are personal . The key is to speak analytically to your boss while your boss learns to speak personally to you.

These types may have some explanatory power but, is this the whole story behind miscommunication? We all know that people communicate differently given the context of a situation. For example, I speak differently to my friends when I am relaxing at a restaurant then when I am in a business meeting with colleagues. Also, most of us are easily adept at adjusting our communication styles to speak to different people.

It is my contention that communication styles play only a small part in miscommunication. The reason that miscommunication occurs is not a fundamential communication style mismatch; it is the inability to communicate effectively so as to engage the listener's attention. This may be because speaker didn't form a good message and/or the listener may be distracted by external factors.

Thus, I believe miscommunication is a matter of engagement and not a matter of style.

What do you think? Is there a valid personality test that explains miscommunication?

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?