Jami Yazdani

Hello, and welcome to our Impactful Projects

and Planning <icrotraining Series.

I'm Jami Yazdani.

In today's session will talk about planning

for and managing your projects communications.

So what is project communication?

Project communication is all of the ways that

we communicate within and about our project.

So our internal communications with our project

team and initiators, and our external communications

with project stakeholders and our organization

or community.

I believe communication can be a project manager's

superpower!

Good communication in a project can create

support for the project, encourage engagement

among team members and stakeholders, and help

you mitigate risks and avoid delays.

Project managers often only have limited,

if any, authority over their project team

and stakeholders.

So we need to use communication to influence

and move people and our projects forward.

It's been my experience that good communication

can rescue a struggling project, while poor

communication can derail even the most expert

team and well-thought-out project plan.

So how do we leverage this superpower?

How do we successfully plan for and manage

our project communications?

I've got three tips on project communication

that I want to share with you today.

First, I strongly encourage you to plan early

for project communication.

I often see project planning checklists that

leave communication planning until the very

end, almost as if it is an afterthought, a

pesky task to consider once you've done all

of your other planning.

But I believe project communication is too

critical to be left until the end of planning.

That's why project communication is one of

my five key elements of impactful project

management, along with scope, stakeholders,

outcomes or deliverables, and schedule, a

focus on communication can greatly impact

your project success, especially for mission

driven organizations.

So how do we plan for communication?

My second tip is to start planning by considering

who, what, how and when.

So who needs to know what about your project,

and how and when will they need to know it?

So who and what tends to be directly tied

to our list of stakeholders and their roles,

so our focus in communication planning is

often on the how and the when.

For example, our project may have a client

or user we are building our deliverables for

- they are our who.

We want to get some feedback from them on

their specific needs.

That's the what.

So how do we do this?

Maybe we're going to send out a survey.

And we will send it out at a particular point

in the project, perhaps pretty early on before

we start building our deliverables.

So there is our who, what, how and when.

Another stakeholder or who is our project

team.

They need to know about the tasks that they're

going to need to complete.

So that's their what.

Perhaps we decide that their how will be a

project management tool with a task list board.

And it will be available throughout the project

so that we can be in constant communication.

That's our when.

In reality, though, we will likely communicate

with a key stakeholder like a user or our

project team in many different ways, in many

different hows and whens.

With our project team, in addition to that

project management tool, we will probably

also have team meetings and send emails or

texts.

And with our users or clients, we will likely

go beyond a survey and send them emails, share

reports, and we may even post updates on our

intranet, website or social media.

This many hows and whens can feel overwhelming,

but keeping our stakeholders engaged and informed

is critical to project success.

So we will likely need to plan to communicate

across many different formats.

Which leads us to my third tip, reuse and

repurpose communication content.

When you start laying out your who, what,

how and when, you will likely see some overlap.

Perhaps two or three stakeholders need reports

- one weekly, one monthly.

Can your notes from a team meeting help you

create those weekly reports?

Can the content from that weekly report roll

up into the monthly report?

Can your monthly report content be repurposed

on the website or as social media posts?

Look for overlap and opportunities to reuse

and repurpose communication content.

Creating and using templates for common communications

is another way to reuse and repurpose content.

Creating a template for reminder emails about

tasks, team meeting agendas and reports can

save you, as the project manager, a lot of

time.

Creating templates is also a great way to

be intentional about what you want to communicate.

It's an exercise in thinking through your

project communications before you are in the

middle of a project and in the weeds with

tasks and deadlines.

That's why planning for your communications

as early as possible is so important.

Don't wait until you have an urgent message

to get across or need critical information

or a task completed.

Think about your message now, in the planning

phase of your project.

So those are a few simple tips on planning

for and managing project communications: By

starting early and in conjunction with stakeholder

planning, by considering the who, what, how

and when, and by reusing and repurposing content,

you can improve your project communications

and support project success.

To help with the who, what, how and when of

project communication planning, you can download

our Communication Planning Worksheet.

This free download of our simple worksheet

is a great start to communication planning,

and is available at yazdaniconsulting.com/resources.

If you need support leading projects and teams,

visit our project solutions page at yazdaniconsulting.com/

projects to learn about the services we offer.

Great, so I'm happy to take any questions

that you have about project communication.

Please add them in the comments.

I'm going to give folks a few moments to add

any questions.

Now, if I'm not able to answer your question

live, I will respond later in the comments.

And you can find all of the ways to contact

me at yazdaniconsulting.com/contact.

So please feel free to reach out to me outside

of this session to talk about your project's

communication challenges.

Okay, so a question I often get is, "If we're

using a project management tool, shouldn't

that be the only format I need for communication?"

And while I guess it's possible, especially

for an internal project and an organization

where all of your stakeholders are comfortable

with and regularly use that project management

tool.

But I don't think that's the reality for most

projects, especially in mission driven organizations.

And I don't think it's reasonable to expect

folks who only interact with your project

at a few key points to learn a new tool.

Well, you can expect it and think it's reasonable,

but I don't think it happens in practice.

If I only have one task to complete or want

to review a report on the project once a month,

how comfortable am I going to get with that

tool?

I'm a fan of project management tools.

I use them a lot myself, and think they are

great for communicating with your project

team.

But I think you will find that you will need

to use other formats, like email, with other

stakeholders.

So plan to use a variety of formats.

Another question is, What should I do if my

stakeholders aren't reading my communications?

I put out regular reports, but keep getting

the same questions."

So while I recommend planning for communications

early, we often find that our original plan

isn't working - the what or how or when from

our plan just isn't getting our message across.

So I would recommend asking your stakeholders

how they would prefer you to communicate with

them.

They may not initially have a great answer,

but you may get some good insight.

I would also suggest that in this particular

case, perhaps your stakeholders preferred

format is direct questions.

So perhaps you can stop sending out all those

emails, or just send fewer and make yourself

available for questions.

That might actually save you time.

Okay, so feel free to comment or reach out

and message me with any additional questions

that you have.

And thank you for participating in our Impactful

Projects and Planning Microtraining Series.

Visit yazdaniconsulting.com/ipp to view all

of the sessions in the series and learn about

upcoming trainings.

Thank you!