Communication is about Mastering Story Telling

I recently delivered a chapter talk on the silver screen techniques on project management with the PMI MassBay chapter on Mar 27, 2024. I synthesized how script writers and story writers master the art of telling stories in every movie or the popular TV episodes. After the chapter talk and the LinkedIn post, I had about two people reach out asking if story telling techniques are relevant in the daily walk of a project manager. These people were not in my talk, but I thought I would synthesize the essential story telling techniques. 

In my book on Organized Common Sense, I mention that any communication is all about making sure that the other person understands what is expected of them because of what was communicated! Essentially, this expectation further expands to persuasive, informative, and exploratory communication. 

• Discussions on why starting or terminating a project is necessary, investing money or cutting back on resources, and motivating people to the same leveled plane to see or do things differently requires persuasive communication with the right level of stakeholders with the decision authority. 
• Reporting on updates on progress and reviewing steps necessary to address risks or bring troubled projects back on track could involve a combination of transactional or transformational communication primarily focused on informing the right level of stakeholders with the right level of information at the right agreed timeframe using the right channel. 
• Continuous evaluation of new ideas based on the product lifecycle stages or experimentation of new strategies to realize competitive advantages (e.g.: CAGE or VRIO frameworks) may involve exploratory communication with the right level of stakeholders so that the required resources (time, money, people, and other non-human resources) may be allocated.

In each of these approaches, the master storyteller gets through meeting the expectations. This is the power of negotiation as well. So, here are some examples of storytelling.

• Hero's Journey: This is a popular technique where the context is identified in greater detail first. Then, a potential interest is created why such a problem needs to be addressed without giving details behind the solution. How a "Hero" navigates through the challenges forms the story.
• Mountain. This approach builds the tension (problem) and the related connection (solution).  Most TV shows follow this. Almost like Hero’s Journey except that there are no happy endings always just like how experiments do not always give the intended results.
• Nested Stories – It is like someone narrating a story from one person’s point of view! May have some lessons but may miss lessons. (Like Forest Gump)
• Spark Lines – Arousing interest on a topic comparing with reality (Biopics; I have a dream - MLK), Winston Churchill's we will fight … we will never surrender, Ahimsa and non-violence by Gandhi)
• Media Hype – Immediate attention needed, like elevator speech, 3 bullet points, 5 things to do before the next meeting, etc. “Always Be Closing” (Glengarry Glen Ross) sales pitch!
• Divergence & Convergence – How to brainstorm for alternatives (all risky ideas welcome) and how to narrow it down because of constraints and limitations! 
• False Start – “I am successful because of my repeated failures” motto! If I can do it, anybody can do it! Helps with motivation, inspiration, etc.
• Debate and Dialog - Expert Panel, Petal Structure, Pomodoro – Examples of getting multiple views – agreeable or disagreeable 

What techniques resonate with you? Why? Share your thoughts!

References

Rajagopalan, S. (2020). Organized Common Sense: Why do Project Management Skills Apply to Everyone. Outskirts Press. https://outskirtspress.com/sriramrajagopalan

Chaos Control: Agility in transforming communication - SIT principle

One of the main ingredients of a Project Manager’s success is taking charge of communication. If communication is half of the struggle, then, how you communicate is the remaining part of the trouble. Recently, I observed a series of emails from several remotely distributed team members. Within a few hours, there were close to 35 emails on the same topic with various members not always picking up the latest thread and using that prohibited button, “Reply to All”. Reminding me of a war room where all members were screaming at each other, this observation is an example of “Email Noise” that serves its very opposite purpose of “Clear Communication.” Proving that emails lose transparency to project team (let alone executives), fails to hold people accountable in a situation that calls for collaboration, and loses control in prioritizing the work queue unless the project manages “takes charge”.

Agile principles promote that teams should be collocated for this reason. Besides, communication is structured to ask what happened yesterday, what is going to happen today, and what are the obstacles to reaching the goals? While change is constant and agile accommodates it, this does not mean that some basic principles of productivity management for systems development (Barry & Wyatt, 1996) should fly out the window. These principles include 1) defining the job in detail, 2) getting the right people involved, 3) estimating time and costs, 4) breaking the job down, 5) establishing the change procedure, and 6) agreeing on the acceptance criteria.

Remote distributed virtual team structures are not disappearing. Project Managers and functional leaders should become attuned to this requirement and need to be “agile” in their thinking and communication so that these team structures can still benefit from unambiguous communication that I believe can be categorized into one of the three categories – Semantics, Influence, & Technology (SIT). 

1. When the question is relatively easy (Boolean response of somewhat fuzzy but still not complex), it can be categorized as technical. For instance, checking on availability of an individual to cover for someone during a holiday period (Boolean) or requesting someone to check for review error logs to identify the cause or review a long document for clarity, resorting to email is better.
2. But, when the same requires deeper discussions requiring prioritization of tasks to meet client needs, and working on multiple projects that have resource constraints, then, communication is no longer simple requiring one to exhibit influence over what the project team may think.
3. When the team structure is distributed across time zones or the environment requires navigating through multiple client priorities, personality profiles, escaped defects noted by the client in production aggravating users, the communication evolves to semantics where ambiguity reigns.

One may find that this resonates to the principle of information theory where the Channel Capacity (C) the strength of “signal” must be increased within the allowable limits of the bandwidth in the channel (B) over the noise (N) introduced. Interested readers can review the Shannon-Hartley theorem (n.d.) for the details. The same is true even in Project Communication:

Clarity in communication is directly proportional to the versatility of the communication style of the originator and inversely proportional to the presence of verbal communication in the communication medium. 

I view this clarity in communication as the utility value of the agility in communication. An email going out asking a question or answering a question for which another question is asked in response means that communication is ambiguous. Such iterative sprints of email communication will not be interactive yielding results when influence and semantics mandate attention. Use of video podcasts, conference bridges, and plain collaborative conversations will transform the signal strength in communication. Using this SIT model, determining the right vehicle to communicate is more important than communication. To be successful in agile, one must be agile and think agile. Results will then speak for themselves.

References

Barry, T., & Wyatt, B. (1996). The six principles of productivity management - project management for systems development. 27^th Annual Seminar/Symposium, Project Management Institute.

Shannon-Hartley theorem (n.d.). Retrieved Aug 27, 2013, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon%E2%80%93Hartley_theorem