Forget documentation, think
communication!
I was once appointed on a project where things weren’t
going according to plan. The clients was 6 months into the project with around
12 weeks left and whilst there had been a lot of talking there wasn’t much
action. To make things worse the client faced penalty costs of nearly half a
million pounds if the project was late.
I talked to the stakeholders and participants to
understand aims, objectives, progress, and issues and quickly noted that lots
of emails were being sent around but there was no ownership or action to
progress the tasks. Moreover the risks and issues languished in a log that
nobody read, and the principal project participants had never all met at the
same time. There were silos of misunderstanding and a vacuum of management with
no leadership and plenty of problems.
My first task was to abandon the documentation that
nobody read, and the emails that people didn’t understand and
instead get people to attend set-up meetings to agree roles,
responsibilities, controls and actions. That done I set-up a weekly conference
call where we discussed what needed to be done and agree action for the next
call.
Governance is important. I made sure that the paperwork
followed after the conversation, not instead of it! Moreover since dialogue
allows us to test each other’s understanding the records only needed to be a
bullet-list reminder not a full explanation. On some occasions we agreed to use
a dictaphone if we needed to capture detail that could not be summarised.
The above approach helped relationships as well as
communications and was also much faster since a ‘round-the-table chat can
resolve in 5 minutes what cannot be achieved in 6 weeks of email exchanges. The
improved teamwork and light-touch paperwork meant that we delivered the project
in the time remaining and avoiding the over-run penalty costs.
I have long believed there is no point in doing paperwork
if nobody reads it. Words are not important, understanding is essential. With
this in mind I have speculated about how little paperwork I could get away with
and have now started using visual communication. Not just PowerPoint, but
actually using YouTube and even cartoon story-boards to explain tasks and
steps. Increasingly I use image tiles to
explain issues and ideas. My aim is to learn and use communication ideas from
iPhone icons and comic book cartoons.
Below are a selection
of some the tiles and
story-boards I have been experimenting with. I would be really
interested to know other people’s experienced and suggestions with this
(hopefully) novel and engaging form of communication.
ciChange is planning its’ activities for 2013. If you are
interested in visual management and visual projects please offer feedback via
email or Linked-In.
Tim Rogers
Founder ciChange
timrogers@ciChange.org
ciChange seminar and networking events for 2013 sponsored
by Total Solutions Group http://www.tsgi.co/
Thanks Tim, I really enjoyed this visual approach
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