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Downwards Communication in International Projects

April 20, 2010 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: Communications Management, Project Management Best Practices

Downwards Communication in International Projects
By Francis Norman

One of the most important tasks a project manager must perform to be effective in delivering their project is to inform, inspire and direct their team. It is often easy in the heat of the project to forget that the project is, in reality, delivered by the team of personnel behind the project manager, the team who often get little glory for their work when the awards are handed out at the end of the project, and frequently feel they are treated like mushrooms, kept in the dark and fed on manure…

So, if the project manager really wants to stand out to their team, they need to bring those mushrooms out into the light and provide them with the best “food” available, by which I mean, inform them of the project status, the coming goals and how the project is tracking overall, an informed team is generally a much happier and coordinated one rather than one which thinks it is being taken advantage of, plus, if they know what is happening, they are far, far, far more likely to act in the best interests of the project since they can see the alignment between the project and their own interests.

While all of the above is simply good project management practice whether your project is a small collocated team or a large international endeavour with several international teams, it is however very much in the latter form where real problems of levels of communication down to the team occur most frequently.

Causes of these communication breakdowns are typically;

  • physical separation between the project manager and their team,
  • a lack of time to conduct the information sessions or
  • the project manager simply not thinking the communication is important as it distracts them form what they believe are more important tasks…

Quite frankly, none of these reasons are valid and the project manager should make every effort to communicate with every member of their delivery team on a reasonable level of frequency, whether they are local to the project managers office or in a remote location.

These communication sessions should be regular and frequent enough to keep the team informed of project progress, realistically, on a long running project this could be monthly or even quarterly as long as there are regular intermediate updates made available, they should be delivered in a form that is readily understood by the international project personnel and they should be conducted at a time and location that is convenient for the recipients, so no webcasts at 6am local time, for this, see my earlier post on communications across timezones.

The form of delivery can be varied to allow the information to be delivered regularly regardless of whether it is delivered in person by the Project Manager, by their delegate if the Project Manager is away, or in writing, it is more important that it is delivered at a regular interval than it is delivered in the same form every time. The project could run a regular blog with project statistics, highlights, a few social and general interest pieces etc, it could consider a score board or noticeboard with the key project data on display for all to see and it can include regular lunch, breakfast, dinner or just breakout sessions to allow the project personnel to gather and be updated on things.

The method of delivery and form of message must, however, avoid being patronising, condescending or a grand standing exercise for the project manager, there are few quicker ways to destroy team spirit than to make the team believe their leader is a pure narcissist, only interested in their own well being and career by continually telling everyone what they themselves are doing, or who regards their delivery team members as a lesser class of citizen, after all, everyone is working on the same project and every cog in a machine contributes to the smooth operating of the machine, every machine requires a certain amount of lubrication, and these communication sessions really do grease the machine.

Francis Norman is currently a Regional Operations Manager in Perth, Australia. Francis maintains a professional blog, International Project Management Communications.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 20th, 2010 and is filed under Communications Management, Project Management Best Practices. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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