PIPOW: A framework for communicating project issues to clients and stakeholders
Delivering bad news sucks.
When I was first starting out in my project management career, one of the things I hated doing the most was delivering “bad news” to my client or an internal senior stakeholder. Whether it was a schedule delay, a critical defect, a budget overrun, scope that couldn’t be delivered — pretty much anything that meant the project wasn’t going to plan would be a cue for some serious anxiety to kick in.
If I had to deliver bad news in a meeting, my voice would break, I’d stutter, my hands would shake — I was a bundle of nerves. I was always so worried about how the news was going to be taken. No one wants to let down their client, or manager.
If I delivered the news in an email, sometimes my client would take it the wrong way and then I’d have to deal with smoothing over the relationship while I was also in the middle of dealing with the original problem. Or my account manager would have to step in. Ouch.
Procrastination makes things worse.
I’ll admit, I’ve been guilty of not communicating an issue early because avoiding a yucky conversation feels like the easy way out. Procrastination 101! And when you finally get around to doing it, well… it’s…
