The Best Communication Tool

This is a guest post by Pawel Brodzinski. He is a project firefighter, team builder and program manager. He runs a blog called Software Project Management where he shares his experience in dealing with software projects in real life. You can also meet him on Twitter. Pawel is a fan and long time reader of The Blog Formerly Known As ProjectShrink which you read at the moment.

There’s much focus lately on communication in projects. Communication is pointed as one of common problems which affect our work. We eagerly try new tools like Twitter in projects. We think about communication in multi-culture teams. We chew communication over and over again.

And we still suck at it.

Messages are misunderstood. People are misinformed. Important data is tweaked. We’ve seen it all. Problems which popped up only because we screwed the communication part. Someone has forgotten to tell someone else, the other guy hasn’t asked and made wrong assumptions, whole situation hasn’t reached an ear of a leader and here it is: a serious problem to solve.

There’s a tool which would help here. The tool you know, but most likely you under-use it vastly. It is actually a set of tools. Ready?

Talking and listening.

Yes, it is so simple. Just go talk with each other more. Listen to what you guys are saying. If there isn’t the right person at hand, grab your phone and call them.

Don’t open your email client to write a poem describing whole process from The Big Bang up to your current problem. Email conversation, although suitable in some cases, isn’t really a conversation. If someone doesn’t agree with you or have important information for you or want to redirect you to someone else you’ll know it… in a few hours. Or days if you’re out of luck. If you used the “talking” trick you’d know it in a minute. Isn’t that a huge time-saver?

And yes, I’m aware that’s not so simple for those of you who work in teams spread over Palo Alto, London and Bangalore. And yes, I still say you don’t talk with each other enough. Are you isolated in your offices? Didn’t think so. Are you going an extra mile for your team and make a call at 7pm from time to time or you prefer good old email ping-pong?

I know many people feel uneasy when it comes to direct communication and there isn’t any more direct way of communication than face-to-face discussion, phone calls being close second. I know since, believe me or not, I have the same problem. I still feel better to drop an email than to make a call. But I just try to talk more. More than I would otherwise. Feeling uneasy shouldn’t be excuse to avoid talking with either a colleague sitting at next desk or a customer.

So forget for a moment about all these fancy tools which get so much buzz these days. When the next problem appears just go talk with someone. And if can’t meet them in person, call them. It will help.

Note: I don’t say all these tools around are bad. No. Personally I could hardly work without instant messaging to take the first example. My point is we use them as an excuse to avoid old-school listening-and-talking approach way too often.