Boost Communication with a Weekly Message

How Well Are You Communicating?
You are in the final few hours of the business week and a considerable amount has happened in the previous four days. You and your team have worked hard to make progress, address challenges and help the overall business in their strategic objectives. But who really knows or even remembers what was achieved and who from your team deserves a pat on the back?

Your weekly reports will have been delivered and status/progress meetings will have been held as usual. Depending on the size of your organisation, your report could be one of 50 and your meeting one of many. Whether you like it or not, any sweet tune of music coming from your area has a good chance of being drowned out by other-noise in the organisation. Most people end the week with a humming in their ears and a vague recollection of what might have happened in areas of the business, other than their own.

Common Complaints

• “No one told me that Project B had been delayed”
• “Why doesn’t anyone seem to know what’s going on with that Programme?”
• “That Programme Manager just keeps everything to himself”
• “No one appreciates what we do here”
• “We don’t feel like a team”
• “Communication in this place is getting worse”
• “What was the outcome of that strategy meeting two weeks ago?”
• “I don’t get to see any of the status reports”

The Basics Are Not Enough
In my view, the default method of project or programme communication (meetings and reports) is insufficient. Whilst most managers will only ever do enough to tick the boxes, only a few go that extra mile, do things differently, and do what it takes to communicate better than average. Most are happy with the fact that their weekly report was delivered on time and that status meetings have been held. But few consider whether this minimal degree of communication is really effective enough.

Appreciation of Good Communication
It is common knowledge by those who know better (Harvard etc) that poor communication is one of the most common weaknesses of managers and leaders all over the world. The whole subject of communication goes way beyond the scope of this article, but suffices to say, many managers and leaders fail to even be aware of the concept of good communication, let alone apply it in their professional lives. Many people will also lack general communication skills and it is very likely that their social and personal lives are not as rich as they could be. It takes a brave person to stand up and admit to themselves, that their communication skills are poor, then set about doing something about it.

But let’s get back to communication in business and the fact that a weekly meeting and report is just “getting away with as little as possible” and simply inefficient.

“The problem with communication … is the illusion that it has been accomplished”
- George Bernard Shaw

The Weekly Message
The weekly message is a rarely used communication vehicle and I have never seen it used properly by many project or programme managers. It is a means of communicating success and challenges within the project or programme on a more human level. When I say ‘human’, I mean in a way which is more natural than a deck of PowerPoint slides, Excel spreadsheets or the like; written in a informal but informative manner which engages the reader, as opposed to switching them off.

This is such a rarely used communication technique within projects and programmes, and as such, makes it different to all the other mundane and standard forms of communication that everyone uses. So it certainly stands out more. In fact, on every single occasion where I have introduced this concept to one of my client organisations, it has been praised and effective beyond belief. I guarantee that if you introduce a weekly message to your organisation, that the awareness, buy-in, support and interest in your project or programme will increase dramatically. I shall mention the other benefits later.

Internal Audience
Depending on whether you are managing a project, portfolio or programme, the internal audience is made up of the team members within your group. Many of your team members will be very focused on their own specific contribution to the overall project or programme, and because it’s human nature, many will be out of touch with what is going on in the bigger picture around them. Some of these people will often feel left out and out of touch with what is happening in the overall scheme of things. Others will feel that their efforts go un-noticed.

A weekly message will enable you to inform your internal audience and also praise their achievements. From the team member’s perspective, this is a superb morale booster. The power of the written word should never be underestimated, particularly when you are aware of who the audience is. Just imagine how appreciated and pleased any of your team members will feel when they read in the weekly message about a special achievement of theirs and how well they performed. But the feeling is even more special because the team member knows that the CEO and other leaders in the company are part of the external audience. It’s human nature to feel good about this.

External Audience
Your external audience will consist of your stakeholders and anyone else who you think could benefit from (or benefit you) if they were well informed about your work. These could include the sponsor, CIO, CEO, managers of other areas which engage with your project or programme in one way or another, 3rd parties, etc.

Communication with your external audience should be part of your Stakeholder management strategy. The weekly message is a wonderful PR tool to help you in this area. When managing your stakeholders, you are managing humans, not systems. Understanding their needs, desires, characters, feelings, levels of influence, perceptions, etc is something that requires strong communication and people skills. Let’s not forget that you should have performed your stakeholder analysis beforehand.

You will be surprised how senior stakeholders will sit up and take notice of a different type of communication – something that stands out from the ocean of reports and minutes which they swim in each week. They will talk about the content of your weekly message and help its reputation soar in popularity. As more people get to know about the Weekly Message, your simple communication will have an increasing effect on the organisation, you and your team of people.

Weekly Message Content
In addition to the day to day communication with the team, status meetings, etc, I’ve found that the Weekly Message covering the following has tremendous impact:

1. Project / programme status overview;
2. Risks and issues (addressed and new);
3. Team member birthdays, holidays, etc;
4. Looming tasks and milestones;
5. Congratulations on individual and team achievements;
6. Strong appreciation for the team’s work;
7. Advice on communication;
8. Motivational quotes;
9. Other topical and relevant subjects.

Written quite casually but with great sincerity, it can be almost like your weekly blog.

The Weekly Message example at the bottom of this page will help get your first weekly message off the ground.

Put Some Life into Your Communication
Don’t be one of those managers who spend less time showing appreciation than, showing disappointment to their team. PRINCE2, PMP, MSP, etc. is the theory of management and standard requirements for any project or programme manager. However it is not these accreditations which make a high performance manager. Communication is the human element which involves personal qualities such as emotional intelligence and is what invariably separates the high calibre managers from the average.

Brush up on your emotional intelligence, inject more of the human element into your project or programme; broadcast your peoples’ successes and be proactive in your communications. It will stand out a mile, because most PMs will only ever do just enough to get by – which is not enough to stand out as a high performer.

If you take a few minutes each day to build your weekly message, when it comes to the end of the week, you simply fine tune it, send it out and enjoy the background effect of some real positive impact on your team. It’s also an excellent informal style of regular communication to senior internal stakeholders. Written well, this is any manager’s opportunity to create some spin.

“When we have the courage to speak out – to break our silence – we inspire the rest of the ‘moderates’ in our communities to speak up and voice their views.”
- Sharon Schuster

Weekly Message Example

Subject: Rubber Duck Programme – Weekly Message

Dear Colleague,
Welcome to the first in a series of informal, yet informative “weekly messages” from the Rubber Duck Programme. The purpose of the weekly message is to improve communications within the programme and outside the programme amongst our stakeholders.

The Rubber Duck People
We kicked of this programme in January 2009 and the mobilisation period proved more challenging than what many expected. However the hard work and commitment of HR Manager Janet Jones has ensured that by the end of February, all resources had been secured, with start-dates confirmed for the 20% that are not yet on board with us.

Risk Management Repository
After working with Excel spreadsheets in the early months, thanks to Alan Smith in the PMO, the RD Risk repository is now up and running. This addresses one of the most critical elements of our programme and enables us all, to efficiently manage risks, whether they exist at project level or have been escalated to board level. The URL for the RD Risk repository is http//rubberduck/rd1 and login credentials are the same as your corporate login credentials. Alan will be facilitating several Risk Management workshops over the coming weeks.

External Stakeholder Support
Whilst the Rubber Duck programme budget was agreed in January, due to our major supplier of yellow paint billing us in USD, the weakening of the GBP has subsequently increased our yellow paint costs. After a meeting with CEO Greg Lake, the programme budget has enjoyed a 6% increase to help us achieve our objectives for the organisation.

Jeff Jenkins Puts the Beak Project Back on Track
After the Beak project suffered a severe set-back recently, Jeff Jenkins, who recently joined us from The Swan Company, has worked tirelessly to put the project back on-track. Jeff also wants to thanks his team for putting in the weekend work and the late hours recently to contribute to this model example of team-success.

5th May Outage
There will be a network outage from 6pm until 10pm on 5th May due to…

Etc…