PMIAUS13

The inaugural PMI Australia 2013 conference is over. To create the event, the PMI Australian Chapters collaborated to develop a platform for professionals, academics and community representatives to share knowledge and experience. For a first time and a new committee it was a great start and we look forward to the 2014 event.

Our contribution was a presentation: Communication ≠ Engagement that included the world’s first ‘mass verbal tweet’! Certainly social media and web technologies have made broadcast communication in the 21st century easier then ever, but communication does not equal engagement and the ‘verbal tweet’ proved this!

Project success requires the key stakeholders, including senior executives and the sponsor to be actively engaged in support of the project objectives. And achieving engagement requires mutuality, a robust relationship built on empathy and trust, plus credibility and leadership to bring different stakeholder viewpoints into alignment to assist the work of the project.

Effective communication is the tool that facilitates the building of relationships and engagement but this type of communication is focused, personal and two-way. As a consequence, the project team need to invest significant time and effort in these key communication channels. The challenge is identifying the right stakeholders and the right messages to communicate ‘at this point in time’.

You can download the presentation from: http://www.mosaicprojects.com.au/Resources_Papers_170.html

And read our blog on credibility at: http://mosaicprojects.wordpress.com/2013/04/27/credibility/

When our paper was originally submitted last year, I was expecting to be doing the presentation. However, in the interim I was accepted as a member of the International Faculty of the EAN University in Bogota, Colombia, presenting a Masters’ level course – Managing Project Teams. So I’m enjoying a few weeks in South America and the second author, Patrick Weaver enjoyed the hospitality of Sydney and presented the paper for us.

Credibility

There are all kinds of skills, qualities, and talents you need to be a successful project manager, but credibility is the single most important quality every project manager must possess. You certainly need to be able to see the big picture, be a leader, motivator, inspector and persuader; but, all of these qualities mean nothing unless you are seen to be credible.

Credibility is a combination of being seen to be trustworthy, convincing, and reliable. It is built in the minds of other people who are ‘watching you’ or need to rely on you, particularly your team members, managers and other key stakeholders. People judge for themselves whether to take you at your word or not.

The Building Blocks of Credibility:

The key building blocks are set out below:

Trust is the foundation – when someone trusts you, you can build respect through ethical and effective behaviour. Trust is simply the assumption that you will behave properly and do what you say you will do; most pet owners trust their pets to behave! You earn respect by demonstrating ethical and effective behaviours. But respect is not enough – you can respect gallant losers and enemies.

The step from respect to credibility requires demonstrated competence, underpinned by knowledge (for more on competence see WP1056 Competency). When someone believes you are credible, that will listen to your advice and act upon your suggestions.

However, the beliefs perceptions and assumptions have to be real in the mind of the ‘other person’!

If your operating framework is not aligned with the other person’s belief framework you cannot be credible to them – it’s all in the mind of the other person.

You may be the greatest IT project manager in the world, but if the way you dress and the jargon you speak does not fit with a particular senior executive’s beliefs about how competent mangers dress and speak, you will not be credible to that executive.

The way to break through the ‘belief barrier’ is to build empathy.

Empathy is the capacity to recognise the emotions that are being experienced by another – the ability to ‘stand in their shoes’. Within business this is more generally characterised by a combination of beliefs and desires, and grasping these beliefs and desires is essential to being able to develop empathy.
The ability to imagine oneself as another person is a sophisticated imaginative process. An empathic interaction, however, involves you communicating an accurate recognition of the significance of another person’s ongoing intentional actions, associated emotional states, and personal characteristics in a manner that the other person can appreciate. It’s not the message itself that matters so much as the way it is communicated.

Put all of this together and you can build you credibility one stakeholder at a time.

Maintaining Credibility:

There are a number of things you can do as a project manager to maintain your hard earned credibility, including:

• Do What You Say You Are Going to Do – Following through is easier said than done, and requires thoughtfulness to back up your words with actions…all the time. Your team is always watching how you behave. If you say you’re coming in early the next morning to knock out a tough part of the project plan, then make sure you show up early. Credibility starts with following through on your smallest commitments and migrates all the way up to your major promises.

  If you are not quite sure you can follow through; then don’t commit to it just yet. There’s nothing wrong with keeping your mouth shut and doing a bit more research before committing, and then following through on your promise.

• Don’t Talk Too Much – The more incessantly you talk, the less credibility you will have. Certainly, project managers need to talk, usually a lot. The key is to find the optimal point at which you become and stay credible by moderating how much you say and what you talk about. You can always add a bit more ‘talk’ if needed, it is impossible to unspeak something that is already said.

• Listen to Your Own Conversation – A very helpful practice is to listen to your own conversation and reflect on your dialogue with project team members. They’ll remember everything you say, so should you!

Some Simple Ways to Destroy Your Credibility

It takes years to build up a storehouse of credibility, and it is a great asset to have. Then, if and when you do make an honest mistake, that storehouse of credibility will bring you through the storm. However, there are certain things that will destroy your credibility within a matter of moments:

• By Accident – Certain things are out of your. You must rely on others to do what they say they are going to do. You can follow up, cajole, and persuade as much as possible, but ultimately it is the responsibility of the resource to get the job done.

  Your superiors will understand for a little while if you are unable to deliver on a project because of other people’s shortcomings. However, these little accidents will ultimately undermine your credibility if they continue to occur.

• By Covering Up – You will destroy your credibility if you deliberately conceal information, it is a breach of trust – the foundation of credibility.

• By Being Manipulative – Another way to instantly lose credibility is to be manipulative. One technique of manipulation is convincing someone else that it’s in their best interest they get something done, when the reality is it’s in your best interest. Once the deception is uncovered your credibility is gone.

Conclusion

Build a solid base of credibility and your project management career will flourish. Trust is the foundation (for more on trust see: WP 10030 The Value of Trust). From this base your actions and competency build credibility. It’s hard earned, invaluable for influencing managers and ‘advising upwards’ effectively to help your managers help you, and it is easily destroyed!

PERT – What’s in a name?

I could choose to call the image at the top of this page a tennis ball – it is about the right shape and is a bright colour, but if I chose to do so all that results is confusion! The name we call things matters because it communicates what we are talking about to our audience.

Over the last week we have been dragged into a number of Linked-In discussions focused on questions such as ‘Do you use PERT?’ Partly as a result of our latest blog on the PMBOK 5th Edition  and also because Mosaic Project Services (and particularly Patrick) has a high profile writing about scheduling history.

The overriding conclusion from the debates we’ve witnessed is no-one knows for sure who is saying what. Each user of the term PERT may be referring to a Network Diagram, a Monte Carlo simulation, some other simulation or the actual PERT technique developed in the 1950s. If the basic premise of the debate is not clearly defined the net result is a lot of noise and no possibility of reaching a conclusion of consensus – in exactly the same way as playing tennis using the ‘ball’ pictured above, all you end up with is a mess.

I’m not sure why so many organisations and people chose to use names that have a very specific meaning completely out of context but it seems increasingly commonplace:

• it may simply be a lack of awareness, assisted by seeing many similar incorrect usages of the name;
• it may be a desire to look clever by using technical jargon, which of course backfires big-time as soon as someone who knows hears the misuse;
• it may be an overt commercial move to trade off a well know ‘brand’ to make a tool or offering seem better than it is.

What is important to consider though, is apart from the first option none of the other factors are ethical behaviour and all of the factors destroy effective communication.

To help bring some level of knowledge into the discussions around PERT, we have published a White Paper today on ‘Understanding PERT’.  This paper outlines exactly what PERT is and was, identifies the shortcomings in the technique and delineates what PERT ‘is not’ and the reasons why. After everyone has understood what PERT is and is not, let the debates continue but this time with the effective communication of ideas between the protagonists, ie, a communication in which the receiver actually understand what the sender is meaning.

The alternative was effectively described by Robert McCloskey, a US State Department Spokesman several years ago ‘I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realise that what you heard is not what I meant!’  Effective communication needs a mutual understanding of the terms used.

Download the White Paper

ISO 26000, CSR and Stakeholders

Numerous studies have consistently shown that organisations that support overt corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities, either by allowing staff to participate in voluntary work or by donating to charities, or 100s of similar options for giving back to the wider community do better than organisations that do not. It is an established fact that organisations that embrace CSR have a better bottom line and more sustained growth, however, what has not been clear from the various studies is why!

Two options regularly canvassed are:

• Because the organisation is doing well for other reasons it has the capacity to donate some of the surplus it is generating to the wider community whereas organisations that are not doing so well need to conserve all of their resources. Factor in the effect of taxation and great PR is generated at a relatively low net cost.
• Because the organisation does ‘CSR’ it enhances its reputation and as a consequence becomes a more desirable place to work and therefore attracts better staff at lower costs and is also seen as a better organisation to ‘do business with’ and therefore attracts better long term partners and customers again at a lower cost than other forms of ‘public relations’ and advertising.

Both of these factors have a degree of truth about them and frankly, if an organisation does not seek to maximise any competitive advantage its management are failing in their duties. However, this post is going to suggest these are welcome collateral benefits and the reason CSR is associated with high performance organisations lays much deeper.

We suggest that observable CSR is a measurable symptom of ‘good governance’. The Chartered Institute of Internal Auditors define governance in the following terms:
Governance is about direction, structure, process and control, it also is about the behaviour of the people who own and represent the organisation and the relationship that the organisation has with society. Key elements of good corporate governance therefore include honesty and integrity, transparency and openness, responsibility and accountability.

Consequently, a well governed organisation will generally have a good reputation in the wider community; this is the result of the organisation’s stakeholders giving that organisation credibility and loyalty, trusting that the organisation makes decisions with the good of all stakeholders in mind. It can be summarised as the existence of a: a general attitude towards the organisation reflecting people’s opinions as to whether it is substantially ‘good’ or ‘bad’. And this attitude is connected to and impacts on the behaviour of stakeholders towards the organisation which affects the cost of doing business and ultimately the organisation’s financial performance.

Therefore, if one accepts the concept that the primary purpose of an organisation of any type is to create sustainable value for its stakeholders and that a favourable reputation is a key contributor to the organisation’s ability to create sustainable value. The importance of having a ‘favourable reputation’ becomes apparent, the reputation affects stakeholder perceptions which influence the way they interact with the business – and a favourable reputation reduces the cost of ‘doing business’.

However, whilst a well governed organisation needs, and should seek to nurture this favourable reputation, it is not possible to generate a reputation directly. The organisation’s reputation is created and exists solely within the minds of its stakeholders.

As the diagram below suggests, what is needed and how it is created work in opposite directions!

What the organisation needs is a ‘favourable reputation’ because this influences stakeholder perceptions which in turn improve the stakeholder’s interaction with the organisation, particularly as customers or suppliers which has a demonstrated benefit on the cost of doing business. But an organisation cannot arbitrarily decide what its reputation will be.

An organisation’s ‘real reputation’ is not a function of advertising, it is a function of the opinions held by thousands, if not millions of individual stakeholders fed by all of the diverse interactions, communications, social media comments and other exchanges stakeholders have with other stakeholders. Through this process of communication and reflection the perception of a reputation is developed and stored in each individual’s mind. No two perceptions are likely to be exactly the same, but a valuable ‘weight of opinion’ will emerge for any organisation over time. The relevant group of stakeholders important to the business will determine for themselves if the organisation is substantially ‘good’ or ‘bad’. And because the sheer number of stakeholder-to-stakeholder interactions once an opinion is generally ‘held’, it is very difficult to change.

The art of governance is firstly to determine the reputation the organisation is seeking to establish, and then to create the framework within which management decisions and actions will facilitate the organisation’s interaction with its wider stakeholder community, consistent with the organisations communicated objectives.

Authenticity is critical and ‘actions speak louder than words’ – it does not matter how elegant the company policy is regarding its intention to be the organisation of choice, for people to work at, sacking 500 people to protect profits tells everyone:

1. The organisation places short term profits ahead of people.
2. The organisations communications are not to be trusted.

The way a valuable reputation is created is through the various actions of the organisation and the way the organisation engages with its wider stakeholder community. Experiencing these interactions create perceptions in the minds of the affected stakeholders about the organisation. These perceptions are reinforced by stakeholder-to-stakeholder communication (consistency helps), and the aggregate ‘weight’ of these perceptions generates the reputation.

The role of CSR within this overall framework is probably less important that the surveys suggest. Most telecommunication companies spend significant amounts on CSR but also have highly complex contracts that frequently end up costing their users substantial sums. Most people if they feel ‘ripped off’ are going to weight their personal pain well ahead of any positives from an observed CSR contribution and tell their friends about their ‘bad’ perception.

However, as already demonstrated, actions really do speak louder than words – most of an organisation’s reputation will be based on the actual experiences of a wide range of stakeholders and what they tell other stakeholders about their experiences and interactions. Starting at Board level with governance policies that focus on all of the key stakeholder constituencies including suppliers, customers, employees and the wider community is a start. Then backing up the policy with effective employment, surveillance and assurance systems to ensure the organisation generally ‘does good’ and treats all of its stakeholders well and you are well on the way. Then from within this base, CSR will tend to emerge naturally and if managed properly becomes the ‘icing on the cake’.

In short, genuine and sustained CSR is a symptom of good governance and a caring organisation that is simply ‘good to do business with’.

Unfortunately, the current focus on CSR will undoubtedly tempt organisations to treat CSR as just another form of advertising expenditure and if enough money is invested it may have a short term effect on the organisation’s reputation – but if it’s not genuine it won’t last.

One resource to help organisations start on the road to a sustainable culture of CSR is ISO 26000: 2010 – Social responsibility.  The Standard helps clarify what social responsibility is, helps businesses and organisations translate principles into effective actions and shares best practices relating to social responsibility. This is achieved by providing guidance on how businesses and organisations can operate in a socially responsible way which is defined as acting in an ethical and transparent way that contributes to the health and welfare of society. Figure 1 provides an overview of ISO 26000.

© ISO: https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso:26000:ed-1:v1:en

Interestingly, my view that understanding who the organisation’s stakeholders really are and engaging with them effectively is the key to success, is also seen as crucial by the standard developers! For more on stakeholder mapping see: http://www.stakeholdermapping.com

Conclusion

This has grown into a rather long post! But the message is simple: Effective CSR is a welcome symptom of an organisation that understands, and cares about its stakeholders and this type of organisation tends to be more successful than those that don’t!

Don’t procrastinate about your goals for 2013!

The strategies for achieving goals were purported to have been defined in the “1953 Yale Study of Goals.”  But, as it turns out this study is little more than an often-quoted urban legend that, it appears, was never actually conducted.

However, what’s even stranger is a recent study by professor Dr. Gail Matthews of the Dominican University of California, backs up these ‘mythical’ strategies for achieving goals! The legend is based in fact!! (Read the full report)

So based on real scientific study if you want to fulfil your New Year Resolutions and achieve your goals for 2013 the verdict is in – write down your goals, ensure they are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic and Time-framed) and tell your friends or colleagues.

The research shows that that people who write down specific goals for their future are far more likely to be successful than those who have either unwritten goals or no specific goals at all; and that people who wrote down their goals supported by ‘action commitments’, shared this information with a friend, and sent weekly updates to that friend were on average 33% more successful in accomplishing their stated goals than those who merely formulated goals.

Unfortunately, the research did not identify a way to prevent us procrastinating about getting started and actually writing some formulated goals down …… but there are some useful ideas in our White Paper on ‘Personal Time Management’ that can help.

PMBOK #5 Boosts Stakeholder Management

The publication of the PMBOK® Guide 5th Edition is a major boost for stakeholder management. The introduction of Chapter 13, Project Stakeholder Management as a distinct knowledge area raises the importance of engaging stakeholders to the same level as all other PM ‘knowledge areas’. Ideally the new section would have been placed next to the closely aligned process of communication management but this is not to be – the PMBOK is expanded by adding new chapters to the end.

The four processes follow the familiar PMBOK pattern with a few differences. They are:

• 13.1 Identify Stakeholders – identifying everyone affected by the work or its outcomes.
• 13.2 Plan Stakeholder Management – deciding how you will engage with the stakeholders.
• 13.3 Manage Stakeholder Engagement – communicating with stakeholders and fostering appropriate stakeholder engagement
• 13.4 Control Stakeholder Engagement – monitoring the overall relationships and adjusting your strategies and plans as needed.

The 5 stages of our ‘Stakeholder Circle’ methodology are embedded within these processes; the key steps in the ‘Stakeholder Circle’ are:

1. Identify – the primary purpose of 13.1 with very similar objectives.
2. Prioritize – This is mentioned in 13.1 (Identification) without any real assistance on an effective approach to this important task. The PMBOK recognises most projects are going to be resource constrained and should focus its engagement activities on the important stakeholders but that’s all – options to calculate a meaningful prioritisation is missing. See more on prioritisation.
3. Visualize – This is also included in 13.1 (Identification) based on a simple 2 x 2 matrix. A number of options are listed including power/interest, power/influence, and the influence/impact grids. The Salience model developed by Mitchell, Agle, and Wood 1997 is also mentioned without attribution. In reality to properly understand your stakeholders you need to understand significantly more than two simple aspects of a relationship. The ‘Stakeholder Circle’ diagram was adapted from the Salience model to help teams really appreciate who matters and why. This will be the subject of another post in a couple of day’s time.
4. Engage – the primary purpose of 13.2 (Plan engagement) and 13.3 (Implementing the communication plan). Separating planning and implementation is a good idea. The planning process uses an engagement matrix similar to the tool built into the ‘Stakeholder Circle’ – However, whilst the PMBOK looks at the attitude of each stakeholder (both current and desired) it omits the key consideration of how receptive the stakeholder is likely to be to project communication. If the stakeholder does not want to communicate with you the challenge of changing his/her attitude is a whole lot harder and the missing priority level lets you know how important this is.
5. Monitor and Review – whilst this is the focus of 13.4, the assumption of review and adjustment is a statusing process. Our experience suggests the dynamic nature of a stakeholder community requires the whole cycle starting with the identification of new and changed stakeholders to be repeated at regular intervals of 3 or 6 months (or at major phase changes).

Conclusion.

As mentioned at the beginning, the introduction of a separate knowledge area for stakeholder management is a huge advance and should contribute to improving the successful delivery of projects – PMI are to be congratulated on taking this step!

However, unlike most other areas of the PMBOK, the processes outlined in this 5th Edition are likely to be less than adequate for major projects. As soon as there are more than 20 or 30 stakeholders to assess and manage, the tools described in this version will be shown to be inadequate and more sophisticated methodologies will be needed.

Note:
Stocks of the PMBOK® Guide 5th Edition are now in the shops:
Internationally: http://marketplace.pmi.org/Pages/Default.aspx
Australia: http://www.mosaicprojects.com.au/PMP-Pack-LP.html

For other posts on the new PMBOK 5th Edition see: http://mosaicprojects.wordpress.com/category/training/pmbok5/

The Stakeholder Mutuality Matrix

Whilst the stakeholder community for any project or program can be a very diverse group of people and organisations, there is a key sub-set that either require goods, services or other outputs from the project, or have to supply resources, services or support to the project. These ‘logistical’ relationships need careful management as they directly affect the project’s ability to achieve its defined goals.

Altruism and charitable actions are wonderful, but it is dangerous to base the success of your project on the assumption that all of your ‘logistical’ stakeholders are automatically going to be altruistic and generous. The Stakeholder Mutuality Matrix™ described in this post provides a pragmatic framework to help craft communications and build relationships with the stakeholders that matter from a logistics management perspective, within the project’s overall stakeholder management framework.

Understanding your Stakeholder Community

Project communication takes time and effort, both of which are in limited supply. Therefore, most of your communication effort needs to be focused on stakeholders that are important to the success of your project. This requires answering two key questions about each stakeholder:
1. Who are the most important stakeholders at this point in time?
2. Why are they important?

Understanding who is important is fairly straightforward, based on an assessment of the stakeholder’s power and involvement in the project. The Stakeholder Circle® uses a combination of power, proximity and urgency to define the most impotent stakeholders. The amount of power held by a stakeholder and their degree of involvement with the work of the project (proximity) are fairly static. Urgency, defined as a combination of the value of the stakeholders ‘stake’ in the project and the degree of effort they are likely to use to protect that ‘stake’ changes significantly and can be influenced by the effectiveness of the project’s communications and the strength of the relationships between the project team and the stakeholder. (See more on prioritising stakeholders).

Whist this process is highly effective at defining who the most important stakeholders are ‘at this point in time’, from a logistics perspective there is a second important group that also needs attention. Care needs to be taken to ensure that lower priority stakeholders who have to provide the support and resources needed for the project’s work are not overlooked in the communication framework. Effective ‘preventative’ communication can keep this group of logistically important stakeholders happy and low on the priority listing, whereas failing to communicate effectively can lead to problems and the person rapidly moving up the prioritisation listing.

Using the Stakeholder Mutuality Matrix

Once you know who is important either from a logistical or prioritisation perspective, you also need to understand why each of these stakeholders is important to define the type of relationship you need to develop and plan your communication accordingly.

The Stakeholder Mutuality Matrix™ provides a useful framework to help in this part of your communication planning. The matrix has two primary dimensions:

• Each stakeholder will either need something from the project to further their interests or alternatively need nothing from the project.
• Similarly the project either needs the active support of the important stakeholders, usually in the form of assistance or resources; or alternatively requires nothing from the stakeholder.

The result is four quadrants that provide a framework for communication and within the framework each stakeholder will also be either supportive or negative towards the project (for more on supportiveness see the SHC Engagement Matrix).

All high priority stakeholders need to be considered plus any low priority stakeholders that have to supply goods, services or support to the project.

• Project needs nothing / stakeholder needs nothing: Important stakeholders in this quadrant are almost invariably ‘protestors’ or ‘objectors’ attempting to block or change the project. Occasionally very powerful and interested stakeholders have no requirements of the project.
  • Approach for positive stakeholders: Keep informed and engaged.
  • Approach for negative stakeholders: There are two communication options:
    - You may be able to defuse the ‘protests’ by providing better information, but this only works if the protest is based on false assumptions.
    - The alternative is to choose not to communicate with the stakeholder beyond some necessary minimum.
    - The only other alternative is to change the project to remove the cause of objection but this is rarely within the authority of the project team.
• Project needs nothing / stakeholder needs something: These stakeholders are the easiest to manage from a logistical perspective; providing their requirements are part of the projects deliverables. If their requirements are outside of the project’s scope the stakeholder needs to initiate a change request.
  • Approach for positive stakeholders: All that is needed is regular reassurance that their needs will be fulfilled.
  • Approach for negative stakeholders: Provide information to clearly demonstrate your deliverables to them will be beneficial and are aligned with their core interests. These stakeholders are typically an organisational change management challenge.
• Project needs something / stakeholder needs something: This group needs active management. Project communication needs to clearly link the provision of the required support or resources by the stakeholder to the project being able to fulfil the stakeholder’s requirements. Time needs to be spent developing robust relationships to facilitate an effective partnership that supports both parties interest.
  • Approach for positive stakeholders: A strong relationship is important to ensure a good understanding of both parties’ requirements. Including clearly defined information on what you need from them and when it’s required, linked to reassurance that their needs will be fulfilled.
  • Approach for negative stakeholders: Significant effort is required to change the dynamic of the relationship. You need their support and they need to understand that this is in their best interest if their needs are going to be fulfilled.
  • Approach for low priority stakeholders: All that is usually needed is clearly defined information on what you need from them and when it’s required, linked to reassurance that their needs will be fulfilled.
• Project needs something / stakeholder needs nothing: This group are your major risk; it typically consists of regulatory authorities and others who have to inspect or approve the project’s work as part of their normal business. Care is needed to build a proper ‘professional’ relationship that respects the integrity of the stakeholder’s position whilst at the same time ensuring your communications are received and acted upon.
  • Approach for positive stakeholders: A good relationship is helpful; however, the key requirement is clearly defined information on what you need from them, when it’s required and why their input is important to the project.
  • Approach for negative stakeholders: Significant effort is required to change the dynamic of the relationship. They are important to you, but you are not important to them and have very little to ‘trade’. To change their attitude, you need to understand the source of the negativity and use any available option to build rapport either directly or through other supportive managers, or by appealing to some greater good.
  • Approach for low priority stakeholders: Ensure clearly defined information on what you need from them, when it’s required and why their input is important to the project is provided in adequate time to allow the stakeholder to do its work.

Once you understand the mutuality matrix, the way you communicate with each of the important stakeholders can be adjusted to ensure both parties in the communication achieve a satisfactory outcome.

Communication!

The recently released Sixth edition of the APM-BoK consists of four major sections: context, people, delivery and interfaces. Typical ‘hard’ project management processes such as scope, schedule, cost, resource, risk, integration and quality comes in the section focused on delivery. This is after the section concerned with people and interpersonal skills and the first area featured in the APM-BOK under the people area is communication. The APM-BoK recognises that communication is fundamental to the project management environment, and makes a very powerful statement: “None of the tools and techniques described in this body of knowledge will work without effective communication”.

To an extent the PMBOK is playing ‘catch-up’ with other key standards including the Association of Project Management (UK) Body of Knowledge (APM-BoK) 6th Edition and ISO 21500. The good news is all three standards now see identifying the important stakeholders in and around a project or program and then communicating effectively with each stakeholder as the fundamental driver of success.

The recently released Sixth edition of the APM-BoK consists of four major sections: context, people, delivery and interfaces. Typical ‘hard’ project management processes such as scope, schedule, cost, resource, risk, integration and quality comes in the section focused on delivery. This is after the section concerned with people and interpersonal skills and the first area featured in the APM-BOK under the people area is communication. The APM-BoK recognises that communication is fundamental to the project management environment, and makes a very powerful statement: “None of the tools and techniques described in this body of knowledge will work without effective communication”.

The PMBOK® Guide 5th Edition has followed PMI’s standard practice of retaining existing chapters and adding new sections at the back so the positional prominence in the APM-BoK is not possible. However understanding the changes between the 4th and 5th Editions and comparing these to ISO 21500 does show the extent of the increased focus in the PMBOK on communication and the stakeholders you communicate with.

MANAGE STAKEHOLDERS

This is a new section in the PMBOK® Guide 5th Edition (Chapter 13). It is based on two processes moved from the communication section of the 4th edition and has been expanded.

Identify stakeholders is a beefed up version of the same process in the 4th Edition, focused on understanding who the project’s stakeholders are.

Plan Stakeholder Management is a new process that describes how the stakeholder community will be are analysed, the current and desired levels of engagement defined and the interrelationships between stakeholders identified. It highlights the fact that levels of engagement may change over time.

Manage stakeholders remains basically the same as in the 4th Edition and is similarly defined in ISO 21500.

Control Stakeholder Management is a new process that ensures new stakeholders are identified, current stakeholders are reassessed and stakeholders no longer involved in the project are removed from the communication plan. The process requires the on-going monitoring of changes in stakeholder relationships the effectiveness of the engagement strategy, and when required, the adaption of the stakeholder management strategy to deal with the changed circumstances.

As with ISO 21500, the early parts of the PMBOK discussing the management or projects in organisations also has a strong emphasis on stakeholders (Chapters 1, 2 and 3).

COMMUNICATIONS MANAGEMENT

This section of the PMBOK® Guide 5th Edition has been consolidated and expanded and is very similar to ISO 21500 in its effect.

Plan Communications remains basically unchanged, the key input is the stakeholder analysis.

Manage Communications is a new process that amalgamate the 4th Edition processes of Distribute Information and Report Performance, and in doing so removes a lot of unnecessary confusion. This new process goes beyond the distribution of relevant information and seeks to ensure that the information being communicated to project stakeholders has been received and understood, and also provides opportunities for stakeholders to make further information requests. ISO 21500 has an interesting additional function (not in the PMBOK) which is the management of the distribution of information from stakeholders to the project in order to provide inputs to other processes such as risk management.

Control Communications is a new process that identifies and resolves communications issues, and ensures communication needs are satisfied. The outputs are accurate and timely information (resolved communications issues) and change requests, primarily to the communication plan.

Summary

Communication is the means by which information or instructions are exchanged! Communication is the underpinning skill needed to gather the information needed to make project decisions and to disseminate the results from all of the traditional ‘hard skills’ including cost, time, scope, quality and risk management. Good communication makes these processes effective, whereas poor communication leads to misunderstood requirements, unclear goals, the alienation of stakeholders, ineffective plans and many other factors leading to failure.

The common theme across all three standards is that communicating the right information to the right stakeholders in the right way (and remembering communication is a two-way process) is fundamental to success. The basic requirement is to deal effectively and fairly with people, their needs, expectations, wants, preferences and ultimately their values – projects are done by people for people and the only way to influence people is through effective communication.

Project communication skills include expectation management, building trust, gaining user acceptance, stakeholder and relationship management, influencing, negotiation, conflict resolution, delegation, and escalation.

What’s really pleasing to me is how similar these ‘standard’ requirements are to the ideas embedded in my Stakeholder Circle®methodology, books, blogs, White Papers and tools. I have no idea how much influence my writings have had on the various standards development teams but it is pleasing to see a very common set of ‘best practices’ emerging around the world. Now all we need is the management will to implement the processes to improve project and program outcomes.

The role of Oration in Communication – a lost art?

The core purpose of communication is to elicit a change in perceptions, understanding or behaviour in the receiver; this is particularly true of communication with your team members. But if you want a person to remember or respond to the contents of the message, the first essential is for the message you are communicating to be ‘received’ – far too many messages are simply ignored because the sender is perceived as ‘boring’ or the message is seen as repetition of the same old information.

Effective written communication is a skill that is still appreciated and used by a range of professionals. How to write effectively is outlined in our White Paper WP1010 – Writing Skills and page layout is discussed in WP1065. However, you need to apply a completely different set of skills and re-structure the information if you want to communicate the same message verbally, this is the art of ‘oration’.

The Ancient Greeks developed the art of oratory over 2000 years ago. In classical Greece and Rome, the main component was rhetoric (that is, composition and delivery of speeches), and was an important skill in public and private life. Good orators are able to change the emotions of their listeners, not just inform them.

The ancient art of oration is still an important skill to acquire even when you have access to powerpoint or are only speaking to one or two people. The challenge of effective oral communication is staying on message (mixed messages don’t help anyone) whilst changing your style and rhythm to avoid becoming boring……

Great communicators use a similar approach to great music. It does not matter if you listen to Beethoven’s 5th or one of my favourites, Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ you find consistency and variety in the same piece. Patches of high intensity contrasted with quieter movements within a memorable and complete masterpiece.

The same effect can be achieved in your communication by balancing positive and negative elements of a message or changing the direction of the information flow, for example:

• If you want someone to stop an undesirable behaviour certainly point out the problem (a negative) but also highlight the benefits of the change you want to occur (the positive).
• Rather then just telling the team they are behind schedule change the direction of the information flow and ask then for ideas to regain the lost time.

The message can be consistent but the variety leads to engagement, the other key element is to finish on a high – great music does not fade away, it builds to a crescendo!

Really great communicators such as, Martin Luther King, Winston Churchill, JFK and others all had a consistent heartfelt message they wanted to communicate in a way that would create a strong reaction in their listeners, all had very different speaking styles, but each had a real sense of rhythm and performance. Read any of their great speeches and you can see the words are carefully crafted for effect, but when you listen to the speech, the presentation adds enormous weight to the message.

Whilst you may never need to ‘fight on the landing fields’ or ‘have a dream’ to change a nation, taking the time to think through how you will present the information in your communication in a way that is engaging and memorable will help you be more effective in literally getting your message across to your audience.

Rhetorical devices
Effective communicators use a range of devices to increase the resonance of their message, some of the more common include:

1. Allusion: an indirect or casual reference to a historical or literary figure, event, or object (but the link has to be understood by the audience).

2. Antiphrasis: the use of a word opposite to its proper meaning; irony. Example: The project manager calmly yelled at his team about the importance of testing!

3. Apophasis: accentuating something by denying that it will be mentioned. Example: I won’t even mention that you misspelled the client’s name in the report.

4. Aporia: expressing doubt about an idea, conclusion, or position.

5. Aposiopesis: stopping abruptly and leaving a statement unfinished, giving the impression that the writer or speaker is unwilling or unable to continue. Example: Pat’s behaviour in the meeting made it clear to everyone that he was . . . but we won’t go there.

6. Analogy: a comparison of two things. Metaphors and similes are both types of analogy.

7. Hyperbole: using exaggeration for emphasis or effect; overstatement. Example: If you take the challenge of speaking to the team too seriously, you will surely go mad.

8. Sententia: quoting a maxim or wise saying to apply a general truth to the situation, thereby offering a single statement of general wisdom. Example: Perhaps we should all remember what Stephen King once said, “The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”

9. Pleonasm: using more words than necessary to express an idea.

10. Epizeuxis: the immediate repetition of words for emphasis. Example: The answer to that question is no, no, no, a thousand times no (used a lot by politicians…)

You don’t need to remember the names of these techniques but the concepts can help develop the effectiveness your communication in every circumstance. Formal presentations also need preparation, for more on this see WP1009 – Presentation Skills.

Developing an effective oral communication capability is a skill that requires practice and benefits from pre-planning before you start an important communication. How much time do you spend working on the data in your messages compared to the way you are going to communicate the information?

Thoughts on communication

There have been a couple of ‘stories’ in the Australian media of late that suggest a fundamental change in the communication landscape is emerging. One is the ongoing furore around a comment in very bad taste made by radio presenter Alan Jones at a private function organised by a political party, the other concerns perceptions about one of our political leaders. For the purpose of this post, the facts of the two situations are less important than the trends they suggest are emerging.

The Australian government does not try to moderate good taste and within sensible limits around defamation, incitement and vilification we enjoy the privilege of freedom of speech which I believe is critically important; therefore:

Alan Jones has a right to exhibit bad taste and make his comment and the 1000s of other people who are using social media to express their objection to the comment have an equal right to ‘free speech’ and the whinging from the 2GB management (Jones’ radio station) about the effect of the social media campaign on their advertises is also ‘free speech’.

Having said that, what I believe is really interesting is the shift in power that is evident. As a high profile radio presenter, Jones used to have almost complete power, he controlled the microphone, could rubbish detractors on air and cut off their response. That power still remains but has been circumvented by social media; a sustained campaign by the ‘twittering classes’ has cost 2GB hundreds of thousands of dollars in cancelled advertising – a new paradigm for directors and managers to deal with.

In a similar vein, the ongoing ‘noise’ around opposition leader Tony Abbot’s attitude to women will be interesting to watch through to a conclusion, if one is ever reached……

But even at this early stage there are a number of observations that are likely to become increasingly important in an effective stakeholder engagement and communication model for any entity; both individuals and organisations.

1. Negativity is becoming a very dangerous weapon to deploy. American politicians of all persuasions have been running negative advertising about politicians of the other persuasion for many years. The negative advertising has worked, the America public consistently place politicians at the very bottom of any list based on ethics, trust, etc. Used car salesmen and journalists are preferred to politicians and the situation is not much different in Australia. If you start using negativity, the power of social media to spread the negativity almost guarantees it will come back to damage the initiator. In the connected age, negativity is rapidly becoming a WSD (of similar power to a WMD but read ‘weapon of self destruction’).
2. Perceptions are easily created and hard to dispel or change. I have no idea how Tony Abbot actually works with women, but a negative perception has emerged. Perceptions are frequently wrong, but they are based on what people believe they saw or heard. Consequently this type of social perception cannot be changed by people with a vested interest telling others they are wrong, to quote Margaret Thatcher “Power is like being a lady… if you have to tell people you are, you aren’t” – the same applies to perceptions. Perceptions can be managed but they are built over time and have to be changed over time and this can only be achieved with a sustained change in observed behaviour – words are not going to do anything.
3. There seems to be an emerging disconnect between perceptions and emotions and reality. This was the focus of my blog post Credit, Trust and Emotions. What’s not mentioned in the blog, but is in the RBA report, is that non-mining business investment has been increasing rapidly despite the flat business sentiment. The real economic situation and actual investment levels are aligned, but the business sentiment is failing to recognise business reality.

Managing a corporate image, your project’s image within the organisation or your personal image is certainly getting to be a whole lot harder. What I’m wondering based on the above is, are we starting to see a real shift from positional power, supported by negativity and traditional advertising to something more subtle, distributed and potentially positive, and if so how can this be effectively managed?