PROJECT GONE BAD: Strategic Communication for Project Managers

As a consultant and project management professional, I emphasize that strategic communication is indispensable in project management. It is not just about overcoming immediate challenges but about building a career characterized by resilience, strategic foresight, and a reputation for reliability and success.

If you find my insights valuable, please engage with this article and share your thoughts. Together, let's elevate the conversation around strategic communication in project management.

Problem Statement

One day, my former colleague was an inexperienced project manager, the next day he had to handle a crisis that far exceeded his experience and training, and probably most others' as well.

He fortunately works to this day as a senior project manager; though in a different company, but still experiences inheriting problematic projects in connection with job changes. There is a potential risk of a damaging reputation tick each time. I assess this as a premise for operating as a project manager, which is why the topic of strategic communication is relevant for all project managers.

Using my analysis of a specific incident that was handed down to me by a former colleague, I will answer the question:

How can one work with strategic communication and attempt to avoid reputation ticks?

Background

As a newly hired project manager, my former colleague took over projects from two senior project managers who had sought new challenges.

His first major project was a demolition task at an outdoor location. According to his mentor, the project was well-defined, and all agreements were in place. It was only a matter of scheduling the continued execution with operations and suppliers; and assigning a field supervisor, whose primary role was safety and coordination between operations and suppliers.

The first part of the demolition went without significant problems. But it wouldn't go so smoothly with the last part. In the preparation phase, the regular field supervisor for the task was present, but due to days off, the responsibility temporarily shifted to another.

On a Monday, with another change at the field supervisor post, the actual demolition was to occur. Just before noon, the project manager was contacted by the company's PR spokesman, who had been called by a local journalist. The project manager subsequently contacted the main contractor to see if everything was alright. The main contractor assured him everything was fine. There were some challenges, but they would be solved during the day.

The company, which the project manager worked for, had a reputation to protect. The project manager, on the other hand, had been employed for such a short time that he had no reputation. "All senders - individuals, companies, parties, organizations, cities, events, schools, and products - have a reputation, and that reputation is crucial for their position in the market, regardless of what this market consists of." (Trine Nebel, 2017, p. 9).

In the afternoon, the project manager was called up by the safety department, which had stopped the demolition after observing a potentially dangerous situation.

The project manager had never experienced such a situation before, and he was unfamiliar with the organization. Who could he consult with? He therefore reached out to his closest manager, who was on vacation. However, it took 2 days before the manager responded to the project manager's inquiries.

The production manager asked the project manager to meet the day after the incident at the scene, where he wanted to know what had been thought to do. The project manager therefore invited the main contractor, as it was their responsibility. He had an expectation that they would take responsibility and come up with a solution. They were, after all, the experts. It turned out he was gravely mistaken. The main contractor pushed the responsibility onto their subcontractor, who did not attend the meeting, and therefore also had no solution to the problem. The project manager had expected the main contractor to take control in accordance with the contract, which the project manager's colleagues had instructed him would happen. But this did not happen, and he appeared as a project manager who did not have a plan at the meeting with the production manager. As an inexperienced project manager in an organization he was not familiar with, he now stood alone with a really bad situation.

Days later, the project manager, however, solved the problem in a really good way with a focus on HSSE (Health, Safety, Security, and Environment). Despite this, he was still hit by a reputation tick.

Communication

What is the definition of strategic communication and how does it fit with my problem statement? I judge Trine Nebel’s definition to be applicable in the work as a project manager: "A communicative management tool that supports the art of winning a battle or succeeding with an effort - and along the way knowing who does what, when, and why, to succeed." Communication is strategic in the sense that credibility is at stake in the specific case and the project manager's reputation in the organization. "Reputation can draw on a past, and a good reputation can save a sender many an issue, and maybe one crisis, if handled well." (Trine Nebel, 2017). As a newcomer, unfortunately, the project manager did not have this ballast.

The project manager's communication with the production manager, who was very powerful, did not work. "When the communication DOES NOT work, we can 'go back' and analyze the five relationships in Cicero’s pentagram." (Trine Nebel, 2017):

SENDER: There is a forced meeting that the production manager has asked for. It is the project manager and the project group that must communicate since they know the most about the project and the incident. The project manager imagined gaining trust by reacting quickly and letting the experts step in, but this completely fell through. It was a tense situation, and at that time, he did not make considerations concerning ethos. "Ethos is (the most important in communication, according to Trine Nebel) and an expression of wisdom (including being knowledgeable and competent), morality (including being decent and sympathetic), and approachability (including the will to selflessness and generosity)." (Trine Nebel, 2017). The project manager clearly failed to be knowledgeable.

RECIPIENT: The production manager's attitude is that the problem needs to be solved safely and quickly. The project manager also imagines that he is not kindly disposed, as he is of the belief that the incident would not have occurred if the project group had followed the company's guidelines. The expectation of the project manager is that he takes control and solves the problem. This was not the production manager's perception of the project manager after the meeting.

SUBJECT: The message from the project manager's side was not in place since the main contractor could not present a plan, nor provide an explanation for the incident. They had no arguments and very little information. They had no examples of how others had solved similar problems and the company’s guidelines suggested other solution methods. They did not appear particularly intelligent in the meeting with the production manager.

LANGUAGE: The production manager's mother tongue was not Danish, and he expected communication to be correct and precise. The project manager was not trained in English in the given context at the time, therefore understanding and knowing technical terms and concepts were at a low level compared to the production manager's expectations.

CIRCUMSTANCES: The purpose of the meeting was to reassure the production manager and give him confidence that the project group would be able to solve the problem. The project manager’s role thereby necessitated that he take the lead. But due to his limited experience with the company's stakeholders and processes, no manager to back him up; and the fact that he had taken over a project already in the execution phase before he was hired, he was pushed to the utmost limit. Add to this his short experience as a project manager.

Overall, the project manager scored low on all parameters in Cicero's rhetorical pentagram.

Manage Your Reputation with the Tick Model

The Tick model is interesting because, in Tillid h?nger ikke p? tr?erne [Trust Doesn’t Grow on Trees], good Issue Management is understood as relationship building and reputation management. Issue Management is used if one wants increased trust and a better reputation. Trine Nebel writes (2017, p. 8): "Because once the infection has taken hold in the sender and brought them to the ground with publicity-borreliosis, there's a very long way back to full mobility in the market one communicates in.". This very well describes the project manager’s situation.

The Tick Model consists of 5 phases (Trine Nebel, 2017, p. 13):

What learning can the project manager (and all other project managers) extract by applying the Tick Model?

1. to Listen: In the few hours from the incident to the project manager's meeting with the production manager, there wasn’t an opportunity for him to listen. He listened to a few close to him, but they gave him the bad advice to let the main contractor come up with a solution. The project manager should have listened actively to the production manager (Trine Nebel, 2017, p. 39): "By listening actively, you know what you as the sender can engage in dialogue with the recipient about, and you have all opportunities to meet, correct misunderstandings, service, and inform.".

2. Trust: "Phase 2 in the Tick model is based on the recipient having or gaining trust in the sender, in this way accumulating goodwill." (Trine Nebel, 2017, p. 49). The project manager had not had the chance to accumulate goodwill with the production manager, and there was obviously not much trust either. Trine Nebel (2017, p. 50) suggests: "And the sender, who wants trust from the recipients, must take the three credibility builders as something absolutely indispensable in their work with their own reputation." The project manager did not appear skilled (1) regarding the subject. Whether they shared morals (2) and whether the production manager felt accommodated (3) he cannot answer. But had he appeared skilled and capable it would have been sufficient.

3. to Manage: In this phase, the project manager was most pressed. He needed to communicate that he had analyzed the problem and had a plan. This was not the case, and he was not in control. Trine Nebel (2017, p. 65) prescribes: "The 3rd phase of the Tick model is the phase closest to the communication models that deal with crisis communication, and here a communication plan comes into its own.".

The W-plan is as follows (Trine Nebel, 2017, p. 66): "Who says What to Whom, When, and Why – and with the addition: in Which media and with What effect?".

"The goal for the company [the project manager in this case] is essentially to convey what has happened and explain how one relates to the situation." and "In a crisis, it's therefore not about convincing the outside world that they are wrong, but convincing oneself about how the problem actually exists, and what responsibility one ought to take on." (Trine Nebel, 2017, p. 69-70).

The project manager now understands that by taking on more responsibility, he could have reduced the damage to his reputation.

4. to Explain: The project manager has received a reputation tick, and there is no other way than to explain himself. But this is an arduous process: "It only takes a moment to lose the good reputation, but it can take an incredibly long time to sufficiently explain oneself if one has been bitten by a publicity-tick." (Trine Nebel, 2017, p. 82). But not only that: "A tarnished reputation makes it difficult to communicate - whether the sender is an individual, an association, a company, or a political party." (Trine Nebel, 2017, p. 82). The project manager's experience of the time after the incident and 1-2 years forward was that it seemed difficult for him to work independently, and he was subjected to a high degree of micro-management from his closest manager and distrust from the other managers.

The production manager and the rest of the management eventually accepted the project manager's explanation of the course of events. But his reputation was severely affected because he inadequately managed the first 48 hours after the incident. He only slowly corrected this afterwards by managing many projects with a firm hand in accordance with the deliverables in the project triangle.

5. to Passionately Tell: The project manager's passionate story became that he earned a reputation as a person who adhered to processes but at the same time managed to solve difficult projects that no other project managers wanted to take on. His passionate story was even so good that he never had problems finding project participants. Unfortunately, it took many good stories to erase the one bad story from the beginning of his career with the management. This is supported by Trine Nebel (2017, p. 91): "As a sender, one must understand storytelling as a very long-term effort, which the recipients need to mature to if they are to take in the passionate stories and allow themselves to be changed by them.".

Perceived Reputation

The project manager's perceived reputation developed at different tempos among project participants whom he worked closely with and their managers, where the contact was peripheral. If we define the project group as a unit with him as the project manager, he had more success communicating internally with the project group than externally with the managers. This was both fantastic for him and unsatisfactory since it was the managers who distributed the benefits, such as bonuses and salary increase. His two legs of the tweezers did not function, and he never succeeded in completely removing the reputation tick. The project manager's passionate story evidently did not reach out to the management with the same effect as to the project participants.

My Advice from PM to PM

Always investigate the premises and business case for projects you take over from others. It is your foremost duty as a project manager to understand the project in all its essential details. Especially if it's a project that you have inherited after someone who has left the company, and if everyone around you is pushing to move forward as quickly as possible. Don't jump the gun.

Do not just believe that previous project managers have done a good job. Regardless of their seniority and reputation. You need to know it!

Reference: Nebel, Trine (2017). Tillid h?nger ikke p? tr?erne. Ajour Publishing, Aarhus (152 pages).