I help project professionals get more done with less stress. Having been a project manager for over 20 years, I share tried-and-tested tips that work in the real world, every Tuesday. Join our community of over 15,000 project professionals (and accidental project managers too!).
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Hello Reader, I believe that some of the old comms tools aren't good enough any more. Take the communication matrix. It's a classic tool where you list out the stakeholder group, what information they need, what format you are going to provide it in, the frequency of update and the owner. Nothing is inherently wrong with it, but it describes the production and distribution of communication, not communication effectiveness. Shouldn't we be asking instead: What does the audience need to understand? Why does it matter to them? What do we want them to do next? How will we know it worked? Communication today is about creating shared meaning, by layering in context. Project communication practice has historically been very good at answering who gets what information, when and how. Today, we also need to answer: what meaning are we trying to create, what needs to happen as a result, and how will we know that happened? But that's just my take on it. What do you think? I’m wrapping up my research into how project managers communicate at work, and I’d love to include your experience. If you haven’t completed my Project Communications Survey yet, there’s still time. The survey asks about things like stakeholder communication, reporting, communication challenges, channels, meetings and AI, and you can click through it in 5 minutes. I’ll be using the results to identify patterns and bring real-world data and experiences into some new research. As a thank you for taking part, you’ll also get my new Project Communications Health Check (no email required, it's available to download on the last page of the survey). It’s an Excel-based self-assessment covering 90+ communication practices across the project lifecycle. You can use it to score a current project, identify gaps and create an improvement plan, with an automated dashboard showing where your communication practices are strongest, and where they might need some attention. (If you’ve already completed the survey, thank you.)
Thanks in advance for contributing to the research, and of course I'll share the results when they are ready. Have a lovely week, Elizabeth |
Calling all Rebel Project Managers!
I help project professionals get more done with less stress. Having been a project manager for over 20 years, I share tried-and-tested tips that work in the real world, every Tuesday. Join our community of over 15,000 project professionals (and accidental project managers too!).
Hello Reader, What's the point of a gate review? It's easy to let one blur into just another status meeting on the calendar. A gate review is a control point: a go or no-go decision on whether the project should continue. It's a formal governance step, not a progress update. At a normal status meeting, you're reporting how things are going. At a gate review, the reviewers should be working from agreed criteria and evidence, and actually deciding whether the project carries on, pauses or...
Hello Reader, There are problems you can solve with a framework, a course, or a meeting. And then there are the problems where you have a pretty good idea of the lay of the land, you just need someone to think it through with you. Not because you don't know anything about it, but because you've got too much context and you're too close to it to think clearly. You know what the textbook says. You know what you'd probably advise someone else to do. But when it's your project, your stakeholder,...
Hello Reader, Stuck for ideas? Try this technique for generating a lot of ideas, in a structured way. Lotus Blossom brainstorming works whether you are planning requirements, risk responses, solutions to a problem, and in the video below you can see me work through an example where a team needs to plan out their project communications strategy. A Lotus Blossom template works well for project management because it forces you to expand an idea systematically instead of stopping at the obvious....