Most good managers in project and program management know the importance of maintaining relationships with team members and stakeholders. Basic human relations can go a long way in improving overall program and project quality. However, I have learned that there is a community beyond our immediate team members and stakeholders that are worth considering in everything we do.
I recently put together a report for a project that required much in the way of invisible human relations. The project necessitated communications with many different types of people in many different teams and organizations - all of whom were unseen to myself and others helping me coordinate the report. And the project requirements were forward looking with phases expected to extend over multiple projects and years. Our team was looking at our draft’s product and, as it was taking final form, we combed through it once more keeping in mind our invisible relationships.
Taking Care of Invisible Human Relations
Our invisible relationships are those who might in the near or longer term be affected by what we have written in our deliverable. In combing through the deliverable, with this in mind, we discovered that a number of things were said that could potentially be misconstrued by someone and possibly put an organization or group of individuals on the defensive either now or sometime in the future. Project quality could potentially be jeopardized by misunderstood communications that we should have been clearer on.
This process was eye opening, and as we identified questionable items, we asked ourselves if it was necessary and of added value to include those statements in the final product. In many cases we were able to simply eliminate the statements. In other cases we were able to revise the statements in such a way that they would be pretty harmless to just about any individual, group, or organization that would read it. We took into consideration basic human relations and remembered this all too often overlooked part of project and program management.
The lesson learned here is that we need to nurture invisible relationships as they could be become our current relationships in the future. We need to be mindful of making sure that we are remaining true only to the work that we have done and to be careful not to extend our statements beyond that. Especially if there is any risk of alienating those relationships we may need in the future.
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John Reiling, PMP
Project Management Training Online
Tech Training Online
2 responses so far ↓
1 shim marom // Nov 28, 2009 at 5:23 pm
Hi john, it is refreshing to see a PM related article dealing with some of the soft skills required by a project manager. For some reason or another many bloggers shy away from dealing with this topic (too difficult to deal with?).
The art of using soft skills is the most difficult one faced by a project manager and the one most likely to bring substantial added value once improved. I referred to it sometime ago in http://quantmleap.com/blog/?p=126 where I tried (not sure how successfuly) to argue the point using a semi-mathematical approach that if we were to increase our communication efficiency by just 10% to 60%, our overall project effort effectiveness would increase to 54% and so on.
Cheers,
Shim.
quantmleap.com
2 John Reiling // Dec 1, 2009 at 11:00 am
Shim, thanks for your commment and pointing to that post! I find it funny that there is a real need to put a right brain twist to left brain challenges, but that is sure a way to get through to people! Another way of looking at this is that is we can communicate just a little better each day - say .1% - we can reap great benefits in the log run. I think this can be achieved by focussing on one aspect of communication at a time and practicing it during the day until you “own” it. If we cannot put something into practice right away, we should move on quickly to something that we can.
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