Communication Excellence in Project Management

ProjectManager.com has just released a study on how project managers view project management tools. Five-hundred and seventeen professionals in the LinkedIn group took the survey. According to the group's demographics, 67% of the LinkedIn members are project managers with 44% of the group members in IT.

I wasn't able to download the full report, so I am reporting off the summary. Even so, the summary has four interesting findings:

1. 56% of project managers are unhappy with current tools.
2. 48% of project managers say that lack of integration is their number one complaint.
3. Only 26% of project managers use the collaborative features in their tools.
4. There is a growing demand for simpler tools.

I think this is a very revealing quote from the report: "Of those who participated in the survey 33% said their tool takes too much time to use, 26% said their team won’t use it, 13% said their tool was too complicated and 12% said the tool required too much training."

In my opinion and in my experience working with a number of project management tools, the biggest impediment to their use is that enhance the flow of communication and collaboration. I often talk about how the tool forces the project team to meet the needs of the tool rather than vice-versa. I remember the early days of using Microsoft Project and how much information I had to put in at first just to even build a decent network diagram.

My favorite project management tools are a whiteboard, dry-erase markers, stack of Post-It notes, and a blank wall. Think of how these simple tools enhance communication and collaboration by recording what the project team members decide in their conversations while not hindering the conversations. An online tool that I like to use is Padlet because it captures the simplicity and the flexibility of a white board, blank wall, and Post-It notes.

What are your favorite project management tools and why? How do they help you and your team communicate and collaborate?

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.

Good article in the latest issue of the Harvard Business Review about the importance of managing the emotional culture of organizations. Essentially, leaders should recognize the emotions that help the organization succeed, model the positive emotions, and help employees develop those positive emotions. Much of this has already been studied and verified by the positive psychology. However, it seems that it would take some time to develop a good emotional culture.

Thus, my question: given the temporary and short-term nature of project teams, how does a project manager build a positive emotional culture? Or should a positive emotional culture be a concern for the project manager? Should a project manager select project team members not only on skills and abilities but, also, their ability to contribute to a positive emotional culture?

I just finished Grant Avery's excellent book on managing risks in projects - Project Management, Denial, and the Death Zone. Grant uses examples from expeditions to Mt. Everest and the Antarctica to describe how project teams increase their risky behavior. Essentially, when project teams survive a near-miss and increase their capacity to survive risks, the project teams take on more risk. It is like climbing a rickety ladder. Some climbers keep climbing up the rungs despite how much the ladder sways and bends.

It is because some individuals have a higher risk appetite. Risk appetite is the difference between an individual's abilities and ambition. The wider the gap, the bigger the appetite. Even organizations have risk appetites. A major affect from big risk appetites is that an individual's risk homeostasis (level of risk acceptance) keeps resetting to higher and higher levels. This can also happen to teams and organizations which explains the Challenger and Columbia disasters (the "normalization of deviance" effect).

Grant introduces a framework to deal with out-of-control risk appetites along with some promising research on what makes great project leaders. A great read but there is one major piece missing - the vital role of communication in dealing with project risk and the key to great leadership. The word "communication" is not even in the index.

There is some interesting possibilities for project management communication research here . . .

In the December 18, 2015 issue of the Harvard Business Review, there is a good article on the four elements of IDEO's wildly-successful employment engagement formula. The four elements are:

1. Permission to play - employees are allowed to experiment in a collaborative environment to test out new ideas while building productive relationships.
2. A common purpose, tailored - everyone is aligned around a common purpose but also understand how their particular role fits into the common purpose.
3. A social contract - a shared set of values that takes the place of managing the employees' behavior and efforts.
4. Bottom-up innovation - ideas percolate upward from employees. The purpose of management is to incubate the best ideas.

How close does this sound to good project management? What is the project management team engagement formula?