Communication Excellence in Project Management

Interesting piece in Mind Tools giving some reasons why projects fail. Consider the six reasons listed in the article:

1. The wrong business requirements have been addressed
2. It's not possible to deliver the business case
3. Governance is poor
4. Implementation is poor
5. People lose focus on the project's benefits
6. The environment changes

The first five can all be traced to poor communication. Communication about the need for the project, what the project should deliver, managing the project, and executing the project.

Even the sixth reason, "[t]he environment changes," can be affected by the quality of communication. Someone should notice the environmental changes and could alert the rest of the project stakeholders. But, without good communication practices or a culture that encourages open communication, environmental changes can go unnoticed or underestimated until real harm to the project has occurred.

This is why I argue that every failed project is due to poor communication.

Before answering that question, I need to determine what makes good communication and what makes projects successful. I have some research in that area which I will share next week. But I wanted to throw these questions to the PM community for your ideas. Essentially, I am crowdsourcing for hypothesis. So, please, tell me how you would answer the following questions:

1) What is good communication?

2) What makes a successful project?

3) Is good communication a substantial factor in successful project management?

Continuing from last week’s discussion on the complexity of project management communication, I want to demonstrate another reason for the complexity of project management communication. Project managers deal with a multitude of communication events from one-on-one coaching of team members to negotiating with stakeholders to formal presentations on project status to executives. Each communication event has similar components: know your communication goal(s), know your audience, and pay careful attention to feedback.

Even so, each communication event has specific needs peculiar to that event. For example, project managers use different communication strategies and techniques during a negotiation than they would during a motivational session with the project team. The strategic goal(s) of the communication drive which communication methods and techniques are used by the project manager. This is why, in my class on project management communication, I encourage students to create a PM communication toolbox and stock it with different communication tools.

I am interested in cataloging all of the communication events a project manager engages in during the course of the project. If 90% of a project manager’s work is communication, what percentages of the 90% are devoted to negotiation, formal presentations, coaching, and other types of communication? Are some communication events more prevalent in certain parts of the project life cycle as compared to other communication events?

These are vital questions because project managers are the “centers of communication” of the project (Mersino, 2007, p. 112).  However, project managers “are not generally measured or rewarded on their communication performance” (McManus, 2006, p. 100). Training project managers to be better communicators is an integral part of increasing project success. The first step is to realize how complex project management communication is and helping project managers build their communication toolboxes.

References:

McManus, J. (2006). Leadership: Project and human capital management.  Boston: Elsevier.

Mersino, A. (2007). Emotional intelligence for project managers: The people skills you need to achieve outstanding results. AMACOM: New York.

My biggest objection to the current theory of project management communication is that it is still based on a model from 1949. In the Shannon-Weaver model of communication, messages are encoded by a sender, sent through a communication channel, and then decoded by the receiver. There may be some noise in the channel that obscures part of the message and feedback (which is essentially another message trip back through the communication channel). It is a linear process which doesn’t capture the observed richness of communication.

When describing the Shannon-Weaver model to students, I use the analogy of a chess game. A player moves a chess piece on a chessboard that is observed by the opposing player. If you consider the move to be the message, you can see how player encodes their strategic intentions in the message of moving a chess piece to a particular part of the board. The opposing player answers that message with a message of their own. It is a very constrained turn-by-turn environment much like emailing and texting can be. You can communicate a great deal of meaning through email and text. However, sometimes, you need a richer way to communicate.

This is because we cannot not communicate. Even when we are not communicating, we are communicating meaning by withholding communication. As communication scholars like Philip Salem and W. Barnett Pearce have argued, people communicate to co-create meaning.

“To investigate the complexity of human communication is to examine the development of self instead of self, storytelling rather than stories¸ the emergence of trusting relationships instead of trust, and the transformational potential of conflict rather than managing conflict.” (Salem, P. (2009). The complexity of human communication. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, Inc., p. 219)

Communication, to co-create meaning, is like the many online games (such as the World of Warcraft, EVE, or Star Wars: The Old Republic). Many events are simultaneously happening which are interpreted differently by the players as the coordinate their singular personal understandings into a shared communication episode. Yes, that was a complex sentence but think about the last project meeting you had and how complex it was to communicate the project vision so that all of your project team members understood the vision. Much of your success as a project managers rests on how well you coordinate the management of meaning of the project vision.

We will continue to explore the complexity of human communication in future blog postings, but I wanted to give you the reader a foreshadowing of where I am going with my exploration of project management communication.   

You have probably heard that 90% of project management is communication. You have probably have also read that poor communication is often the number one reason for failed projects. Most project managers agree that communication is key to successful project management.

Improving project management communication is why I started this blog. I am passionate about project management communication and helping project managers develop their communication skills. I teach a course in project management communication at the University of Maryland and am an active researcher in communication (especially organizational communication).

In my research, I have found that the field of communication is undergoing rapid changes as new discoveries in neuroscience, social networks, and complex adaptive systems have changed how we understand the ways people communicate. There are fascinating new discoveries that I will share in upcoming blog postings.

I have also found in my research that the way we teach and practice project management seems to be stuck in the old “transmission” model of human communication. Even the Project Management Body of Knowledge still views communication in the traditional “sender-message-receiver” model.

The purpose of this blog is to demonstrate how new communication theories and methods can revitalize project management communication. I hope that by advancing the art and science of project management communication, I can help project managers become better communicators and, thus, better project managers. Please check back regularly for new weekly postings, and I look forward to your comments and suggestions. Thank you!