Essential Pre-Checks for Successful Communication
Communication is the lifeblood of successful project management. Without effective communication nothing happens on a project! Think about it:
Work needs to be clearly defined and coordinated
The team needs to be informed of the ‘big picture’ and how it evolves
Problems need to be identified and solved through discussion and debate
Impediments need to be eliminated or reduced
Alignment needs to be maintained with all stakeholders
Motivation and tempo need to be maintained
Risks need to be identified and managed
Intermediate work products need to be reviewed and improved
Political agendas need to be identified and managed
Customers need to be informed and managed
Experienced project managers need to be critically aware of communication effectiveness, efficiency and, at times, impact. Some consideration of pre-checks can often help with each of those.
Check Your Mode and Medium
We have a fairly wide choice of exactly how we communicate for each interaction. Do we communicate one-to-one, one-to-few, one-to-many? Do we use email, online conferencing, direct messaging or face-to-face meeting? Each mode or medium has its pros and cons, and making the right choice often comes down to balancing:
Effectiveness
Efficiency
Impact
Importance
Urgency
Audience
Latency
Background noise – that you need to cut through
Relationship effect – that is, positive
These are 9 considerations to make when choosing the mode and the media for a communications interchange. That is quite a lot to consider, but often very worthwhile. The last one, relationship effect, can sometimes be overlooked. Every act of communication can have a positive or negative effect on relationships. In some cases, the communication can purely be to create or build relationships. However, more often than not, this relationship building aspect is a peripheral but important consideration.
Let’s look at some examples:
You want to check progress on the structural design of a PCB – your main consideration is efficiency and speed. You use a textual DM to the electronics engineer. If it sounds complicated, you might propose a 10-minute voice call
You are fighting a major challenge of a critical project – you have made good progress with a potential solution, but you have some remaining challenges. You call your boss and give him a succinct 10-minute update. Bosses love this! Try it.
You have a great overview of where the project is and where it is heading – you call a face-to-face meeting with your development team, and you give them a succinct overview followed by a Q&A session. This keeps everyone on-track, bought-in to the project objects and elicits feedback.
Check Your Purpose and Outcome
What exactly are you trying to get out of a communication? In general terms, it could be relationship building, it could be alignment, or it could be to uncover or investigate problems. When Stephen Covey created the famous book, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, his second habit was, “Begin with the end in mind”. This approach substantially increases your chance of getting an actual successful outcome.
You may have experienced the feeling many time that the meeting you just had was invaluable. It goes without saying, that you knew what a successful outcome was before you went into the meeting.
Defining and visualising a successful outcome, tends to direct how you conduct a communication interchange both in terms of pre-planning and in-terms of how the discussion actually progresses. A good acid test is to ask yourself, what does a successful outcome look like and how do I express that in a single sentence? This also helps you craft your central message, especially when you are trying to persuade or influence them. It also helps you adjust your perspective and your language to that which the audience can understand and relate to.
Consider some examples:
You need to convince your business unit management that the Project Management System needs to be more dynamic and changeable by users. You craft a structured and poignant presentation outlining the disadvantages of a static system and the benefits of a dynamic system. This is just 15 minutes long. You leave 15 minutes for discussion. The benefits are expressed in business terms – a language your audience will understand
You have a new supplier of mechanical assemblies with electrical sub-systems. You map out what you think the design release process will be. You assume that their capacity is constrained and assume a lead-time following a release. You need to create high clarity around the release process. You call an online meeting and walk through the release process and any other criteria. Once discussed, this is documented and agreed.
You parachute into a new project in the execution phase. After two weeks you realise there is a severe lack of systems engineering resource is available in the company. Furthermore, it is evident that the system architecture has not been reviewed. You cross-check the situation with engineering leads for each discipline on your project. You clearly need to get a systems engineer allocated for a few days to help review the architecture and to occasionally get involved with work product reviews and system integration planning. You have one-to-one meetings with your boss, with portfolio management and with systems engineering management. These are face-to-face meetings, in order to get a consensus for systems engineering support.
Check Your Mindset
Our final area to check is that of mindset. All communication involves human interaction. Therefore, seeing things from the same or similar perspective, especially in contentious situations, can help to establish a degree of mutual understanding and hopefully agreement.
When it comes to negotiation and potential persuasion, your mindset going into the discussion can help achieve a successful outcome.
From personal experience over three decades, I have found the following approaches helpful:
On contentious issues show emotional detachment
Be willing to ask searching questions and listen to the other side’s perspective
Be business-like, professional and objective
Show respect
Create a common enemy – the problem or issue that challenges your project and the company’s business success
Be prepared to express the problem from the other side’s language and concerns
Be reasonable
Be prepared to request help
Know that you cannot win all battles – just enough battles to succeed with the project
Talk straight, and don’t “beat around the bush”
Appreciate the concept of constructive debate - exchange opinions and encourage open expression
The other side will be reading your mindset and may react positively or negative, depending on whether they see you as an adversary or a friendly colleague.
Conclusion
We have discussed that effective communication is the lifeblood of a successful project. Communication can give us amazing leverage if conducted in a skilful way. As Archimedes states:
“Give me a lever long enough and I will move the world”
In order to optimise numerous aspects of our communication, we can do several pre-checks which should improve our probability of success. In essence, we should:
Check our mode and medium
Check our purpose and desired outcome
Check our mindset
If we can do these pre-checks on a consistent, daily basis, then we will be on our way to developing our communication superskills.
