Whenever I was working on a project, I was always puzzled by the look I got when I asked about communication policy.
In most cases, communication is considered “embedded” in the activities- hence, no need whatsoever to plan or set guidelines.
This is a short article (1000 words is the limit), summarizing some suggestions that I keep sharing since late 1980s, when I was working everyday in a different project/site.
In my case, whenever I was managing a customer for one of my partners I agreed on a simple rule: define one single communication link with the customer.
Moreover: when negotiating and renewing contracts, part of the negotiation, and the post-signing activities, was the delivery of a simple one page letter.
The content? Formally stating who was going to be the communication link, and the roles assigned to each manager (and their interface).
The basic requirements was always separating the commercial from the coordination role.
To avoid muddling and overlapping activities- and manage relationships.
I managed customers and activities were everybody was used to talk to everybody.
Interesting approach. But not really productive- as a shrewd counterpart could use the obvious lack of coordination to extract concessions and change the activities.
Another puzzling communication approach is the “sand bagging” approach.
Nobody communicates in writing, as that would be too formal.
So, meetings are always closed by an “informal” minute (if at all) with no reference whatsoever to prior commitments, “to do” items, and so on.
Until… until the day when something happens, and one of the actors involved decides to start building a “parachute”.
Well, a parachute built on A4 pages and e-mails is not really going to keep you from crashing to the ground.
Moreover- if you never wrote before, and then start following up each meeting and phone call with a detailed to do list… something must be going wrong.
And, of course, chances are that you and your counterpart will end up having meetings to settle the disagreement on the minutes of a previous meeting, and countless hours to write down carefully worded minutes, sometimes also involving lawyers before releasing anything.
If you think that this is excessive- well, I saw that first hand.
My solution?
It starts with the contract. Or its technical annexes.
Everything has to be readable and understandable by both the people who will carry out the activities, and those who will receive the results of those activities.
If feasible, the activities you will do and the budget that you will spend must refer to specific points within the contract or the annexes- to avoid seeing your activities go toward uncharted territory… while formally having still to deliver what was agreed.
If what you do is “traceable” to the contract and annexes, then it is easier to do the simplest thing: communicate with a steady frequency.
I am not saying that you should write “nothing new on the Western Front” on a daily basis.
Simply: any interaction between counterparts should be followed by a structured minute, with appropriate references or “cross-checking” vs. previous minutes, if needed.
It is not complex- just build the habit.
The interesting side-effect: if everybody knows that minutes will appear after each exchange, the shrewdest customer or team member will soon understand that there is not way to try to “insert” something without a prior agreement, as that would leave a trace in a minute.
And to avoid the usual “signing” approach, the basic rule that usually I enclose in the contracts or annexes is: the minutes of a meeting are used to seed the activities, unless somebody asks for rectification.
I would not discuss here in detail the structuring of a contract or offer, and budget-management and forecasting issues: I am confident that you have plenty of advice on those issues (if you do not, contact me).
But I will share a simple story, on how I converted the monthly report from a “chase the information” game, usually delivering something two weeks after the closing of the month, to a “daily” or “weekly” real-time status.
With the obvious benefit that, in the best conditions, closing was done on the last day of the month. And the billing was available two or three days later (the fastest? delivery on the same night!)
If you work in an organization- you know why knowing not only what is left in the budget, but also how you are consuming it and if what is left will cover the needs is important.
And this is even more important when either your budget has no flexibility (e.g. fixed price or SLA-based contracts), or the negotiating cycle for any budget variation requires months.
The end solution was simple: set the target, assess the way to change how the information is collected, and change it in a way that is transparent to the staff, but delivers the results automatically.
Therefore, instead of asking employees at the end of the month to get from their personal diaries the information needed to fill the online time and cost reporting, I asked to add some “tweaks” in the system.
First, the contract lines became reporting lines and budget forecasting lines.
Second, I asked to “open” the application, so that employees could write their information when available, also in a provisional state, and not just at the end of the month
This, I explained to employees how to just outline their activities, keeping details in their own personal diaries for further reference.
The side-effect? Some employees followed my example- adding into the system “provisional” information on their own scheduling, and cleaning it up as the time went.
This way, at the end of the month it could be feasible for them just to “sign off”, instead of spending half a day to frantically rebuild from memory what their unstructured notes meant.
The additional bonus: each employee became aware from the progression if something was going astray, and was able to inform the coordinator before the issue was out of control.
Tags: activity, budget, communication, contract, delegate, management, minute, structure