How and When You Communicate Matters

Most organizations understand that communication can make or break a project. Nonetheless, few organizations actually effectively communicate with staff and stakeholders about key initiatives. In particular, many organizations wait too long to communicate with staff and stakeholders and use horribly ineffective channels when they finally do communicate.

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Publication Date: 24 January 2024

Communication is one of the most critical aspects of organizational change management. Good communication can significantly increase staff and stakeholder support for a project, leading to increased adoption of changes and higher project returns. Bad communication can destroy staff and stakeholder trust and support and lead to project failure.

While most organizations understand the important role communication plays in the success of projects, many organizations fail to effectively communicate with staff and stakeholders.

One of the most common mistakes organizations make when communicating with staff and stakeholders about projects is waiting to discuss essential topics until everything is known and finalized. Many organizations are hesitant to communicate tentative information because they fear something might change, requiring them to revise communications and resulting in staff and stakeholders losing trust and confidence in the project. But in reality, this very rarely happens.

Most staff and stakeholders understand that things can change as a project progresses and therefore do not lose trust and confidence in a project due to being told tentative information that later changes. However, not receiving any communications about important topics often does lead staff and stakeholders to worry. Humans typically deal poorly with a lack of information, and not hearing anything about an important issue often makes people worry more than hearing news they do not like. Therefore it is typically much better to communicate tentative project information to staff and stakeholders as soon as possible and revise the information later if needed than to wait to share information until everything about the subject is known and finalized.

Another common mistake organizations make when communicating with staff and stakeholders about projects is relying on existing communication channels to disseminate information. Many organizations have established communication channels like weekly electronic newsletters and internal websites that are routinely used to communicate information to staff and stakeholders. Utilizing these channels to share information about critical internal projects is often very tempting. However, it is almost always a horrible idea to do so.

There are two reasons why organizations should refrain from using existing communication channels to provide information about important projects to staff and stakeholders. The first reason is that existing organizational communication channels are typically abysmal at actually communicating information. Because they are used to communicate with people in so many different roles, most internal websites and electronic newsletters contain large amounts of information that is not relevant to specific readers. This makes it hard for readers to find information they are interested in, which in most cases leads staff and stakeholders to simply not engage with these communication channels at all. Most organizations’ internal websites are rarely accessed, and most electronic newsletters are deleted without being opened.

The second reason organizations should refrain from using existing organizational communication channels for sharing information about critical projects is that doing so makes projects appear less important than they often are. Existing organizational communication channels are typically established to communicate routine organizational information to staff. Therefore, using these communication channels to share information about important internal projects creates the impression that the projects are nothing different than business as usual and are no more important than everything else going on in the organization. This can significantly undermine the perceived importance of critical initiatives and lead to decreased staff support and adoption of required business changes.

Instead of relying on existing communication channels to communicate information about important projects, organizations should create new and novel communication pathways that stand out from the drone of everyday business communications. This will help ensure project information is effectively communicated to staff and stakeholders and increase a project’s perceived importance. In addition, organizations should not hesitate to share tentative information with staff and stakeholders. Even if it is tentative, communicating information early decreases worry and helps increase support for a project.

Rules Should Not apply

Some organizational rules are critically important to keeping people safe from harm. Organizational leaders should ensure these rules are always followed. Other organizational rules exist to help staff know what to expect and to keep operations running smoothly. Making project teams working on critical change initiatives follow these rules can often do more harm than good.

The Importance of Traceability

Many software development projects waste time and resources creating system functionality end-users do not want or need while failing to deliver things end-users have specifically requested. Often poor traceability practices are to blame for these failures.

It is So Shiny! I Need to Have It!

It seems like every few years some new, must have process or piece of technology sweeps through industries. When this happens, it can very difficult for leaders of organizations to resist the urge to jump on the bandwagon and adopt the newest thing, even if doing so might be in their organization’s best interest.

The Most Important Aspect of Change Management

It can take a lot of time and effort to complete all of the work required by many formal change management methodologies. If an organization has the resources to complete all of this work, it is often very beneficial to do so. However, if an organization does not have the resources to do this much work, significant gains can still be made by focusing solely on the most important aspect of change management.

The Misapplication of Agile and the Myth that Waterfall is Dead

The popularity of Agile project management has led some organizations to use it exclusively and declare other project management methodologies like Waterfall dead. This often leads to Agile being used in situations in which a different project management methodology would work much better, and this in turn results in poor project outcomes and disappointed end users.