Communication – The Formula for Success
“What we’ve got here is … (a) failure to communicate!” Strother Martin, taken from the
movie “Cool Hand Luke”
N(N-1)/2, where N=#of team members or stakeholders on the project
This is the formula for identifying the number of communication channels and is
frequently a test question for Project Management certification. What it means to
project managers is that the larger the project team, the greater the complexity and the
more time spent communicating.
As a Senior Director of Project Management for a telecom consulting company with 20
years’ experience managing projects, I am responsible for managing large multi-year
engineering engagements to build telecommunication networks. On this particular day,
I was reminded that even an experienced project manager needs to pay attention to the
basics.
It was in this role that I found myself managing a large telecom project expanding an
existing fiber statewide network to bring broadband access to underserved or un-served
communities as the result of a federal grant. I work with a great team who believes in
the value of what we are building and is very conscientious of working with all stake
holders and following all compliance requirements. This can be an extremely
challenging undertaking considering the number of geographically dispersed
communication channels including; federal, state, county, and city agencies, as well as
private land owners, various contractors, and consultants.
This brings us back to our formula and how it impacted me in a very real way.
We had: 9(10-1)/2=40 communication channels in play including:
1. Project Manager
2. Award Recipient (the project’s “primary owner”)
3. Federal agency providing grant funds
4. Federal agency providing cultural clearance
5. Award sub-recipient (the project’s “secondary owner”)
6. Engineering subcontractor
7. Cultural consultant
8. Subcontracted Archeologist
9. Construction Field Manager
10. Private landowner
On this day, during a routine project status call, the recipient brought to the team’s
attention a situation that later subjected our project to a Performance Improvement
Plan issued by the federal funding agency (which, needless to say, is the last thing any
project manager or project owner wants to receive).
At the onset of the project, the team went through a very lengthy process of gaining
environmental approvals, which included the development of cultural plans on each
construction route. As part of the federal grant, conditions were put in place pertaining
to the recipient’s responsibilities and obligations should a construction route change in a
way that may have environmental or cultural impacts. On our project call, I discovered
that a route change had occurred in a culturally sensitive area without federal program
approval and without having the required archeological monitor on site. This was a
very serious error directly related to the challenges of effectively managing complex
communication among the project’s large number of diverse communication channels.
Let me describe the various communication channels involved on this occasion.
The award from the federal government is given to a company that is known as the
“award recipient”. They may have other companies involved in the project, known as
“sub-recipients”, but ultimately the award recipient is responsible for the management of
the entire project including the sub-recipient’s routes. So there is a layer of
communication that occurs between the recipient and the sub-recipient. The issue that
created the problem occurred on a sub-recipient’s route.
My company was hired by the award recipient as well as the sub-recipient to provide
engineering and project management services. Our firm in turn hired various
subcontractors to perform permitting and cultural consulting services. In this capacity,
weekly status calls were held with the sub-recipient involved and various contractors.
This introduced another layer of communication between the engineering
subcontractors, the sub-recipient and his contractors, and ultimately the award recipient.
In this particular example the sub-recipient was working with a landowner to get
permission to cross their land including determining the approved route through the
property which triggered the need for the route change.
There is also a communication channel between the recipient and the federal agency
providing the grant which includes a federal program officer whose job is to make sure
the award recipient follows all the federally mandated rules, regulations, and guidelines.
In addition, other government agencies are involved in managing project construction
from the cultural, environmental and permitting perspective.
In this instance, the award recipient learned of a route change that occurred on a subrecipient’s route through a subcontractor. Based on the information the recipient had at
the time and their interpretation of procedures, they took immediate corrective steps
which they felt were responsible and proactive but did not notify the federal program
officer; this turned out to be a critical required step!
But why did the route change occur and why did the client find out through a
subcontractor before the project manager knew?
As a seasoned project manager, I thought I was doing the right things. We held weekly
calls with the sub-recipient where program requirements were reviewed and routes
discussed. There were also calls between the cultural consultant and the subrecipient’s construction field manager to relay the exact areas of the project deemed
culturally sensitive. In the end, it was determined that the area where an unapproved
route change occurred was supposed to have been surveyed by an archeologist. A
miscommunication between the cultural consultant and the sub-recipient’s field
manager resulted in construction occurring without the required survey (Strike 1!) and
without an approved monitor (Strike 2!). When discovered, this was not relayed through
proper channels to the project manager or to the federal program officer (Strike 3!).
This was a very serious communication failure that resulted in the project being placed
under an extremely onerous and stringent performance improvement plan.
As a direct result of the painful lessons learned in this situation, the team took decisive
actions to ensure this would not happen again. Procedures related to proper
communication protocols, route changes and inadvertent cultural discovery were
reiterated in a formal written communication which the entire team had to sign. Several
training sessions related to these procedures were held and became part of our regular
status calls. We instituted a bi-weekly cultural dashboard to convey project metrics and
held a bi-weekly call with the federal program officer and federal cultural agency to
discuss each route’s cultural and environmental status. Route change processes were
formalized internally and the federal program, realizing they needed to provide better
guidance, issued more structured procedures to assist all current award recipients. In
the end, we received praise from the federal program officer on our dashboard reporting
and our increased communication and related reporting transparency with the program.
These actions helped the project team regain the program’s trust. In fact, what started
out as a potential project killer, turned into a learning event and a success story for our
project.
Mistakes will happen on a project, but it doesn’t have to be your project’s death toll!
Using direct, proactive and appropriately targeted resolution-oriented communications
can help turn a bad situation into a success if your heart and head are in the right place
and the team works together. Our team turned potential failure into success through a
better understanding of the importance of communication channels and their impact.