One day your project management status updates might self-destruct. Jerry Giltenane explains the reasons in this article.
31%, or 2.3 billion, of the planet’s 7.3 billion inhabitants, use social media to communicate with, share, and build a sense community. In a parallel universe, project management is driven by the need to communicate, inform, and develop high-performing teams.
What does this mean for project management?
Communication is the lifeblood for project management. The outcome of a project will be better if there is good communication.
Any tool that can improve internal communication should be carefully considered. Here are some tips to help you choose the right tools, especially in today’s workplace, where virtual project teams are common.
The Position Today…
Many organizations have already started to use enterprise-grade social networks, especially since the 2020 pandemic. These tools are more business-oriented than those that thrive in the wild.
Yammer, for example, is used as a business-focused substitute to Facebook. Slack and Skype for Business are replaced by WhatsApp. Enterprise tools like SocialCast and Skype for Business can be found in organizations as a replacement of micro-blogging tools like Twitter.
Many tools also include image sharing, comment threads and emojis.
These social-media-inspired tools are well-known and this article will not go into detail about them. Instead, I will focus on the key characteristics that will encourage adoption of such tools within companies and within project teams. I will also highlight the important lessons that we must learn if we want to harness the power of these tools to their full potential.
…And How We Got There
Staff used to send and receive their internal communications by using paper, internal post, and the Mail Room was the nerve centre of an organization.
The email was sent.
It quickly became the dominant business communication channel.
These people were comfortable with email and knew how to use it once they entered the workforce. ).
New employees were taught the etiquette of email use before they entered the workforce.
Now, let’s fast forward to today’s new workers. These Millennials view email as a bygone age. They are more comfortable using social media-related tools.
These are the people who will manage large projects over five years. They will expect to use Whatsapp, Facebook, and Instagram to communicate with the project team.
The project managers of tomorrow will also be using tools such as SnapChat, which is a self-destructing message designed for short-term communications, Voxer to send short voicemails, and leave each other video messages. This allows them to communicate in ways that we haven’t considered yet.
Learn more about the collaboration tools used by project managers in this survey.
Project Tools Must Mimic Social Tools
We incumbents in project management need to remember that they don’t have to be familiar with the latest tools that the new entrants use in their personal lives. They must also understand that they will expect and demand that these tools are used when they start working in project teams.
They will consider emails old-fash.