Communications Skills for Project Managers
Book

Communications Skills for Project Managers

Michael Campbell
AMACOM, 2009

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Editorial Rating

6

Recommendation

If you work in a large, complex organization that routinely handles expensive interdepartmental projects, this book is for you. Michael Campbell presents the basics of communications theory with techniques that can improve the interplay among project team members and their stakeholders. Unfortunately, Campbell built the book around a long, detailed case study threaded through the narrative. The hypothetical tale is a noble attempt to personalize methodical project management guidance, but as readers follow the people and job titles in the account, it tends to bog down in jargon, predictability and plodding detail. Indeed, without the case study, the book would still be useful and far more concise. getAbstract recommends this text to serious students of project management’s intricate details and to novice project managers, who will learn necessary strategic lessons about communicating during a complicated, ongoing project.

Summary

Bridging the Gaps

Companies embark upon projects to elevate their performance. When your project is a technical success but customers don’t understand it and, therefore, don’t use it, your project’s business mission has failed – all due to a communication gap between your firm and its audience. When you carry out an internal project to institute a great upgrade in your corporate systems, but your employees won’t adopt it, chalk another failure up to a bad flow of information. Project managers can prevent such expensive gaps by improving their communications planning and execution.

Until about 1990, only complex engineering undertakings, such as heavy construction projects, used professional project management techniques. The transition to applying these techniques to mainstream business projects has been problematic. Project managers using these methods often fail to communicate successfully with their constituencies. They bring projects to completion without input from relevant parties who had anticipated being consulted. This creates false expectations, and makes projects slower and more difficult. A survey of 500 project managers found that poor communications is...

About the Author

Michael Campbell is the president of the Energy Practice at MCA International. He is the author of Bulletproof Presentations and co-author of the fourth edition of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Project Management.

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