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By Barbee Davis, MA, PHR, PMP Our group struggles with designing and implementing a communications plan that is effective and reaches the right audiences. What goes into a design that is easy to use and effective?
Answer: B. Explore a deeper knowledge of the communications field before starting your design. Before the project start milestone, most project managers prepare a plan built around the five pillars of communication:
However, highly successful leaders also analyze other considerations in order to shape their custom templates:
Stakeholders. Look in the PMBOK® Guide to see the list of stakeholders categories. Is there anyone you are overlooking as you prepare your information disbursement strategies for this new project? Risk register. You have prepared a list of project risks, prioritized by their probability of occurrence and their impact to the project—the risk register. As you ponder how to avoid risk incidents, or how to mitigate or soften the blow should they occur, see if early communication exchanges could prevent a risk incident, give you an early warning trigger or forewarn others of emerging issues which could damage the project. Add these preventative exchanges to your plan. Two-way exchanges. A common flaw is that most communications plans are one-way: Sender You send meeting notices, assignments, reports, and additional data to others. Try building in requested feedback to be sure your message is being received and decoded as you intended. For example: “Please write back and tell me in your own words what you understand my request to be, and how and when you will do it.” Understand and retain. Verbal conversations may be the best way to garner understanding, but if you want your audience to retain the information, they also need a written record of each presentation or conversation. Communications research shows that we absorb only 10% of what we read and 20% of what we hear. This suggests that we should use more than one method for relaying important data. Furthermore, we retain 50% now, 25% in two days and only 10% after seven days. You may need to build repeated contacts with the same content into your communications plan to keep it fresh in the mind of your recipients. One size. Have you adopted a “one-size-fits-all” mentality and sent the same documents to all stakeholders? Consider whether the customer really wants to see the same level of detail as the team member wrestling with an activity roadblock. Would the project sponsor appreciate it if you expose problems to the executive team before he or she has a chance to help you solve them? Closeout. Don’t overlook the need for communications to close out accounting codes, get customer sign-off on scope, conduct lessons learned sessions and release team members back to functional departments. By adding them in up front, you blend the time and cost for them into the project baselines from the beginning. Many organizations feel that communications skills are one of the most important factors when selecting a project manager. Hone your ability to prepare a communications plan template that goes above the norm to set yourself apart in a competitive world.
Her new book, “97 Things Every Project Manager Should Know,” includes practical tips from experienced project managers around the world. Ms. Davis is available for speaking engagements and encourages your questions or comments. |
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Quick Quiz
The topic of this article was suggested by Brian Bale, PMP, a 15-year veteran of project management from Phoenix, Arizona, USA. 
Encodes Message 
Barbee Davis, MA, PHR, PMP, is a reviewer for the global PMI Registered Education Provider Review Team. She owns Davis Consulting and is a published author, speaker, writer of training materials and an innovator in presentation skill workshops for corporate trainers. She holds a Black Belt in MS Project and teaches at the university level. | Home BACK TO TOP
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