Sun, water and sharks — three levels in communication as observed in Project Management
Scuba diving, surfing, and plane travel may evoke in some of you pictures of tropical holidays. For me actually this is an often used metaphor to illustrate three levels of communication to Project Managers.
Different people, different stories
Take a look at this picture:
We see 3 people more or less in the same place and at the same time:
1. The Scuba diver — of course she’s amazed by the surrounding ocean but … she must control her oxygen level and current depth and look out for incoming dangers (sharks!!). More than that she has limited vision, doesn’t hear anything and her time down there has an absolute deadline of the oxygen level.
2. The Surfer — it seems that this is the same ocean, but for him sharks are out of sight and out of mind. Sun, company and awesome waves — these are the elements of experiences that will build his nice memories. This is not his first time on the waves and he is capable of comparing it to the previous experiences. What he cares about is having interesting stories to tell and pics to share when he comes home.
3. A Plane passenger — so he watches the ocean through the window … or maybe he is not doing that at all. Maybe he is not sitting next to the window or he’s not at all interested in it. For him this is only a stage in a journey — an obstacle to overcome. He is more interested whether he will reach his destination without delay. The important and interesting part is after landing. It might be business, holidays or other things.
Switching between perspectives
You probably already begun to map this story to your daily experiences. The starting point is to replace the “ocean” with “project” and then you get what comes next.
Needless to say, a good Project Manager must be proficient with communication on all these three levels, and with moving between them. Sticking only to one level and for too long (whether up above or down below) leads to losing the control of the project.
In details the metaphor will unfold differently across different projects and organisations. I will leave to you the pleasure of mapping it to your project:
“Is the dev team just a group of scuba divers?”
“Who or what is a shark in your project?”
“Who is the surfer in the end?”
“Does anybody know where this plane is landing?”
Communication in your hands
So keeping the right perspective in communication is crucial. First of all, you must determine who do you address communication to, and which perspective he occupies. Then you should tailor your communication to achieve best results. This is especially true in formal project communications like reports, keynotes, problem and risk management.
So even in the case of writing a simple e-mail you should consider:
“Does it really matter for a plane passenger to receive detailed knowledge about surfacing techniques of a scuba diver?”
“Is the information about the plane destination really helpful for the scuba diver?”
“Do you really need to scare the surfer with statistics of fatal shark attacks”
There is no single best answer to each of these questions. The most important is then to define the goal we want achieve with our communication and what tools use to get there. Keep your communication fit for purpose on all occasions.
Final thoughts
Inappropriate communication can not only be counter-productive, but can result in the Project Manger demonstrating a lack of control in the project. Seamless operations in all of these levels comes with experience. For the rest of us — this story can be a useful resource … :)
