It’s not just what you say…
Social networking tools are increasingly being adopted by organisations in order to improve communication with stakeholders, including between project team members. The wide range of options available, from community newsletters to the World Wide Web, enables greater flexibility in the way a project can engage with all sorts of different interested parties. With ‘smart’ phones becoming even more commonplace we can choose to be informed of changes and status updates in real time almost wherever we are. But does this information come at a cost?
The amount of information available means that people risk being swamped, and losing sight of what’s important. With an array of emails, blogs, instant messaging, wall posts, texts and tweets, the trend appears to be towards condensing information into ever smaller ‘easily digestible’ amounts. Most people will already have come across key stakeholders who struggle to get further than an executive summary, but how long before even that summary is expected in a ‘tweet’ size!
I was recently reminded of a powerful statistic from Professor Albert Mehrabian’s studies on communication. Known as the balance between the Verbal, Vocal and Visual (‘3 Vs’) broadly speaking the assertion is that 7% of a message is communicated using the words; 38% is communicated through the tone of voice; and 55% relies on body language.
The tone and behaviour are especially important to understand how an individual feels about the message they are communicating, which is crucial to anyone trying to motivate and inspire a team.
Words themselves are extremely powerful – but to be communicated effectively an idea needs to be conveyed in context and in plain English, and people should resist the urge to cut corners with acronyms or online shorthand (text-speak). It’s hard to argue that you can engage stakeholders too much, and social networking in all forms provides a fantastic level of flexibility, but with communication as with most tools and processes there is a fine balance to be found between doing the right thing and doing things right.
Alastair Smart
I'm an associate member of the APM and was previously a People SIG committee member. I have supported MoD Project Teams within the Submarine and Land Equipment Operating Centres, including work to improve project management culture as part of a major change management project; and am currently working in Ottawa supporting the Canadian DND (Maritime) organisation.
Comments
It is a very good point that
It is a very good point that success relies on consistency – regardless of the medium used. With a diverse range of communications options and the potential for a high volume of messages, it grows harder to keep everything aligned. Perhaps there are already examples of where efforts to communicate across multiple social media have directly had a detrimental effect on projects, particularly where the project team might have lost control (rather than external ‘attacks’ or accusations regarding a projects viability or value).
People should be accountable for the message that they are communicating, and across personal media channels (e.g. facebook and twitter rather than project/company websites and blogs) it is very hard to regulate beyond the code of conduct or legal agreement that those sites require on joining, so how do you retract or correct an erroneous statement?
There is also the potential to lose engagement from key stakeholders through too many platforms, complicated log-in requirements, or accessibility issues, so it’s important to consider how your audience might choose to receive your message, and not just how you want to send it.
Thanks for the comments. I’m looking forward to hearing about the Knowledgeshare discussion, and also delving into the forum pages. The blog post on the ‘Role of Social Media…’ made some interesting points and got me thinking about how much time in the office is spent producing hard outputs – compared to the time spent developing the “social glue”!
Personally, I think social
Personally, I think social media has a place in any communication plan – we just need to be careful where and how it is used in project management. As mentioned, social media is generally consumed by a wider audience, e.g. an email to one person versus a tweet to the world, and as such needs to be managed.
I am not sure we have got our heads around the use of social media in project management as yet, but if you have any views, questions, comments or case studies take a look at the dedicated social media forum pages: http://www.apm.org.uk/node/1612/og/forum/731
Projects have always had
Projects have always had informal and formal channels of communication. I see social media as just an extension of the informal chat and interaction which takes place as part of normal discourse. At this level it can provide part of the social network which underpins all successful teams. As ever maintaining a consistent message between the formal and informal communication it a real challenge. It is no good the project manager telling the project customer everything is running to plan, if the team are giving out different messages by the informal channels, be it social media or otherwise. The risk with social media is that the messages are more public and therefore potential more damaging. Clearly project mangers (and other managers) need to address the use of social media are part of working environment. Some organisations try to ban it (or ignore it), but I think this denies the chance to use these new techniques to manage the mood music behind the project.The same rules apply to social media as with any other communication, would you be happy to see what you say on your customers desk or the Evening Standard. I did write a blog post about the role of social media in project management this especially looked at the challenges of managing global projects. The conclusion was that social media had value in providing informal project communications but it was more likely to be inside a corporate firewall.
Wise words Alastair. High
Wise words Alastair. High value and effective stakeholder management and resultant communications is still all to rare in programmes let alone projects. The rapid evolution of social networking technology and its explosion in use threatens to overwhelm organisations that do not take a serious look.
Peter Wilkinson, a social media usage expert is speaking at Knowledgeshare 2011 on 30th June. His insights could be shocking, intriguing but certainly useful, even for oldies like me highly wary of this new world.