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Project Success: Warm Up Your Channels Of Communications by Tim Sanders
December 06, 2012
At Net Minds, we promote project success by encouraging quality communications between all team members. I know how important this is personally, because as an author, I've worked on four books projects. In each case, when we were communicating at a high level, we could plow through anything or overcome any misunderstandings that pop up. When communications became less effective, stress entered the project and the whole creative process slowed down - sometimes gringing to a halt.
It's the natural progression of projects, unless its leaders stay focused on communication quality. In the beginning, as it comes together, we have meetings and long phone calls to discuss the vision, objectives and action items. Once we've come together around a plan, we likely settle in to day-to-day work be it editing, designing or marketing the book. Often, we pick the most efficient channel of communications. Usually, that is email, as meetings and calls feel like an interruption of our work. In some cases, we use instant messaging to reduce the latency in our collaborations. While this makes sense, it's pretty easy for the words on the screen to get in the way of our meaning.
Why? Email is a cold channel of communications. Unlike phone calls, video chats or meetings, it fails to convey our intentions towards each other. In his landmark research on how we decode other's intention, Dr. Albert Mehrabian found that verbal (words on paper/screen) were by far the weakest methods of communicating. He found this was especially true when messages were mixed. Tone of voice was 500% more effective and visual cues were about 700% more effective. That's why your blood can boil over an email with the word 'dumb' or 'stupid' in it or when someone SHOUTS in an email. Sometimes, even the slightest misteps in an email can trigger a meltdown in the receiving party.
There's something magical about the tone of someone's voice or his body language in its ability to convey "I'm your coach," instead of "I'm your dictator" or "I'm your concerned team mate" versus "I'm a controlling person."
This is why I recommend that projects have regular warm channel interactions: Scheduled calls, video chats or meetings. To keep them efficient, you should have a clear agenda, and program them to be an hour or less. When you feel like emails are turning into the negative, pick up the phone and you'll quickly realize that you are saving time with a five minute phone call. This is especially important when someone is upset or feels like you haven't met her expectations in project delivery. The longer you wait or the deeper your email thread becomes, the more emotions get imported into the project situation.
At broadcast.com, Mark Cuban had "The 2 Minute Rule" of relationship managment. When you received an email from either a customer or team mate that indicates his or her displeasure over anything, you had two minutes to get on the phone and talk about the situation. It worked too. I'd receive a nasty gram from a customer about campaign delivery, and when I called her thirty seconds later, she was startled by the call - and backpeddled, often saying, "Uh...I was...just thinking about you!" In many cases, she was apologetic about the email and we worked it all out.
Whatever you do, don't try and convince yourself that digital book projects are purely digital. They have big analog components that provide human warmth to a project, stoking the very relationships required to make great books that will succeed in the wild.
Reference: Mehrabian's Research On Communications
About Tim Sanders
Tim is a bestselling author and former Yahoo! executive with a mission to disrupt the traditional publishing and self-publishing industries and share knowledge with authors looking to publish and market high-quality books.
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