Poor communication causes projects to stall or fall. The importance of communication to project management cannot be overstated.
Former Microsoft luminary Scott Berkun writes critically acclaimed books on the topic. His bestselling collection of essays, Art of Project Management, offers some compelling insights and advice, including this: "Projects happen only through communication ... speed isn't the communication bottleneck, quality is.”
Berkun also notes: "The larger the organization or the project, the more important written skills, and the willingness to use them, become. Despite personal preferences, a project manager needs to recognize when written or oral communication will be effective.
Are you and/or your team equipped to communicate to a standard to ensure a project’s success? Is there a clarity of thought that leads to a clarity of writing? As Berkun also notes: "Project managers must be persuasive in getting the team to strive for simplicity and clarity in the work they do, without minimizing the complexities."
Many project managers spend too much time despairing over and editing the work of their teams. But some project managers themselves struggle to improve their colleagues’ drafts. Few workplaces these days have the luxury of a communications mentor. Universities are pumping out over-writers; graduates whose teachers and school curriculum initially failed them, and then whose tertiary faculties could not or would not correct the oversight.
Ringing any bells? When results are paramount, poor communication stymies the process.
This is a productivity, and an efficiency issue. Lifting the standard of communications is crucial, but it is important not to confuse productivity and efficiency. Productivity tends to focus on quantity of work, whereas efficiency is more concerned with the quality of work.
As John Rampton points out in Entrepreneur1 productivity is performance, while efficiency is how well you perform.
“Productivity is a raw measure” Rampton says. “On the flip side, efficiency is more refined … one is about working harder, while the other is all about working smarter.”
The global Project Management Institute “Pulse of the Profession In-Depth Report” says $US135 million is at risk for every $US1 billion spent on a project, and research on the importance of effective communications uncovers that a startling 56 per cent – $US75m of that $US135m – is at risk due to ineffective communications.
The report, “The High Cost of Low Performance: The Essential Role of Communications”2, says executives and project managers around the world agree that poor communications contributes to project failure, however its research finds only one in four organisations can be described as highly effective communicators.
“On average, two in five projects do not meet their original goals and business intent, and one-half of those unsuccessful projects are related to ineffective communications,” the report says.
“Results reveal that while all aspects of project communications can be challenging to organisations, the biggest problems are a gap in understanding the business benefits; [and] challenges surrounding the language used to deliver project-related information, which is often unclear and peppered with project management jargon.”
In the recently published Strategy Implementation Gap3, project management veterans James Bawtree and Michael Young note that 70 per cent of all projects fail to meet all their goals.
“Those in the project management field will talk about the triple constraint – time, cost and quality,” says Bawtree. “These constraints are often referred to as the iron triangle, as projects often have all three variables fixed to deliver a known outcome in a precise timeframe and budget. This can leave little flexibility to absorb changes needed to maximise the project’s outcome.
One of the difficulties of strategy implementation is poor communication between individuals and business units.
“C-level execs are focused on their part of the organisation and delivering their own top priorities,” says Bawtree. “The role of an executive is becoming more challenging with an ongoing requirement to do more with less resources and achieve results in a less and less predictable world. It is therefore critical that executives build and empower their team, allow a level of (calculated) failure, and learn from these failings so similar activities are not repeated in the future.
“With an overwhelming level of communications through a variety of channels from reports, email, chat, instant messaging, to SMS and voice … it is important that project messages are communicated with the reader in mind so they are quickly able to understand them in context, and the call to action. The communicator’s instructions must be crystal clear.”
Teams of people working together focused on a common goal or objective – not individuals – deliver strategic initiatives and projects. Succinct communication enables project peers to engage more easily, and better management of relationships and politics. As with any activity that involves many people, communication, engagement, and relationship-building are critical. In the absence of these actions, misunderstandings and conflicts can occur and confusion can exist between people as to the aims of the project and its deliverables.
Large organisations often operate in a hierarchy with teams and executives confined to their own division or “silo”. Hierarchical organisations tend to limit communication across the organisation and focus up and down the chain of command. With multi-disciplinary and cross-functional teams being required to successfully implement strategy, and with many strategic initiatives having an impact across multiple divisions, a lack of effective horizontal communication leads to many problems.
Clear, concise, and timely project communication leads to faster and better decision making
Unfortunately, the focus of university project management training is on the technical skills deemed necessary to negotiate the iron triangle or triple constraint. Technical skills are easier to demonstrate and teach than soft skills such as communication.
Writing is difficult; it requires the brain to use several different skills at once. The words must be handwritten or typed. They must be ordered into sentences, spelt according to convention, and improved with clinical punctuation. Higher-order skills then decide what we want to say, and the words to say it best.
But everyone benefits from learning to write clearly and succinctly, and learning to self-edit. Good writing is good editing. Part of the problem today is the sheer volume of project writing. Unless proficient writing and self-editing techniques are in in place, there is little time to reassess.
Acclaimed US project manager William Cohen4 says: "All successful projects are simply a long series of adversities that must be overcome." And: “Until my project is completed, communications is my deliverable.”
Are your project communications hitting the bullseye? Fortunately, help is at hand.
1. https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/354642
2. https://www.pmi.org/-/media/pmi/documents/public/pdf/learning/thought-leadership/pulse/the-essential-role-of-communications.pdf
3. https://www.amazon.com/Strategy-Implementation-Gap-James-Bawtree/dp/0648895009
4. https://www.esopro.com/category/erp-blog/esopro