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.

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?

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.

Adam Ward asked some great questions in response to my last posting:

1) “We know we need to communicate, but--what has to give in order to make time for ‘wandering around?’”

In response, what is more important than wandering around (physically and virtually) to communicate with the stakeholders and project team members? In fact, I consider it good practice for project managers to make regular rounds like doctors do when attending to patients. One good practice is to schedule regular rounds of visiting the project team. I also schedule a quick breakfast meeting every two weeks where I encouraged information sharing. Thanks to mobile apps, a project manager should not feel as if they are tied to their desktop in their office.

2) “How should we design our communication management plans to minimize the likelihood of these behaviors?”

The behaviors that Mr. Ward refers to are: lacking integrity; inappropriately dealing with people; not accepting responsibility, and isolating one’s self. These are not behaviors that can easily be fixed with communication management plans. Rather, these are behaviors that are best addressed with a good mentor or executive coach.

Also, project managers should work to make sure that such behaviors do not develop in the project team members. Now, the difficult question is how to deal with a project sponsor, a project customer, or stakeholder who exhibits such behaviors? Realistically, the project manager should recognize the damage that the behavior can cause and protect themselves and their team appropriately.

Thank you, Mr. Ward, for the thought-provoking questions.