process of developing a strategic communication plan
process of developing a strategic communication plan
Emotional Intelligence
There are various theory and other assumption regarding the process of developing a strategic communication plan in many organizations. The main concerns that are always questioned are the position of the information communicator to pass the right information to the audience. the other question is doing the communicator table the right details that will make the people he or she is addressing consider him or her as a strategic communicator? Therefore, it is true to say that a good and ideal communication that is expected in any company will entail the communication with all the components of strategic communication.
One of the qualifications of a good communicator is the one that is: result oriented communicator, they take time to process the actual working of the experiences. Once the platform is laid out and that the communicator sees that as a good platform to table the issue, then they will address the knowledge and experience, therefore, lead the company towards accomplishing its mission. The full manager who has had enough experience in the project management is crucial in the success of the team and its implementations (Pinto & Slevin, 1987).
The communication managers ensure all the information that need to be put across reaches all the members of the company on time and they table the issue on time for proper decision making. They are assigned with the duty to differentiate between the brand identity and then they can elevate the profile amidst the local news media above all they have the mandate to address the senior most member in all departments like stakeholders.
The communication manager does not have an easy time when coming up with this plan, but they have to ponder on the best applicable long strategic communication plan and give it a priority to be followed to the end. Considering the industries landscape like in Amazon, the most prioritized strategic communication plan must include corporates social responsibility that will initiate the most senior people in the organization like the stakeholder.
The financial information that is prepared in a company is meant for internal users as well as external stakeholders. In accordance with the needs of the stakeholders, the financial statements are planned to depend on these needs. Therefore, there is a need to make sure you manage and engage the stakeholders in the projects. The manager of the project should make sure that the stakeholders understand the following factors:
1. Their goal and timeline.
The stakeholder needs to be informed about the goals and deliverables of the project at hand. This may, however, look to be unnecessary but it is very important, the manager comes to realize too late that they needed to engage the stakeholders in the plan and goals setting till the completion of the project.
This stakeholder that are involved in the initial meetings and communication have incomplete understanding or knowledge of what the team needs to achieve. Secondly, the project manager ought to know how to clearly pass information to the stakeholders about the due dates for the projects and the time when the final deliverables need to be done. This will help them to plan their work early enough from the beginning.
2. Meetings
Most of the projects that are intended to discuss the projects they are accompanied by numerous meeting to helping the deliberation of the concerns that revolve around the project. These meetings are held monthly, weekly or some even daily. More so, they have a lesson review of what has been accomplished in the meeting and what has been agreed.
The stakeholder in the project need to be informed by the project manager when the meeting is being held and which meeting, they need to be attending, the one that they can skip then be given updates later on in the course of project development. The communications that are done towards the stakeholder should include time, the place or the location whether it was virtual or physical then the project manager should include a brief description of the purpose and objectives of the meeting.
3. Responsibilities and task
In a huge organization, the workers are assigned different roles and task, this time become confusing and they end up juggle and then changing task over and over again. Therefore, in case of such confusion, there will be a need for the worker to be given a clear description of their roles in the assignment in the project.
The proper project management will assign the tasks in order of the areas of specialization and then communicate any changes that they have made to the project member and to the rest of the stakeholders on time. This helps to ensure the tasks are handled by the people who are best in that area, hence ensure effectiveness in task accomplishment.
4. Resources and technology
The project manager has realized the secret behind the use of technological tools to manage the project information and ensure the information is communicated to the external stakeholders. There is a need to remove the assumption that, the stakeholders in the project are aware of the modern project management software.
The PM should, therefore, be responsible for letting the stakeholders know about all the tools that intend to use right from the start of the project. Though some software is easy to use, the stakeholders can maximize that and take advantages of their capabilities and even consider prior training on how to use them.
There is a different medium that can be used to communicate this information to the stakeholder:
Face to face communication
Entails verbal or nonverbal communication whereby both member the sender and receiver are in the same location. This medium allows immediate feedback, and one can adjust the message when needed. Project managers can use this medium with their stakeholder as an interview.
Two-way remote communication
Involve a situation where the sender and the receiver are not at the same location. But each can receive real-time feedback to a message. This mode includes the video conferencing, SMS and walkie talkie conversations and many more.
Written communication.
Involve the written words that contain the contents to be passed to the other party. In this, the feedback cannot be immediate. They are good medium as one cannot claim they forgot or misunderstood, unlike another medium whereby one can claim did not hear the message being put across. These include emails, intranet, etc.
The other medium of communication is social media communication, as the use of instant messaging, LinkedIn, etc.one-way audio communication, these may involve video communication too. One records the messages that need to be listened to by the other party, these involve voice mails, YouTube, and many others. Among other many mediums of communication, the project manager can deliver information very fast by choosing the communication medium strategically. The best communication medium will be the most convenient and reliable for the teams and the project manager to use for the stakeholder.
Potential risk to projects and their mitigation
Even in the most organized project, there are always flaws that happen. This will depend on how much time is spend while trying to organize the project in order to be able to counter the problems in case they arise. In any condition, the risk is always uncertain and the project manager ought to know how to mitigate and prevent complete closure of the project processes.
The common project risk is:
1. The cost- cost in a project can keep escalating this may be due to poor planning of the cost and accuracy
2. Performance risk- the results from a project may fail to produce results that will be consistent in accordance with the project specifications
3. Schedule risk – when the project takes longer than the time allocated, these risks make the cost of the project to shoot beyond the budgeted amount.
4. Government risk- the project ought to perform in accordance with the ethics in the community and maintain the company’s reputation.
5. Market crisis- competition and other factors like foreign exchange and interest rates in the market affected the project through liquidity in their market.
6. Strategic risk – an error that happens when the strategic plan in the project does not go as planned.
7. Legal risk – there is legal and other obligation that includes contact risk and the other litigation that work against the organization.
As it has been stated the project risk may include both internal risks that which are connected to the successful achievement of the goal of all the stages in the project and the risks that are far beyond the controllable level of the team. The other risk is the external risk, these affect the project while they are still outside the organization but they affect the ultimate value of the outcome of the project. There are other risks that which are associated with not doing the project at all, these risks are called deferral risk. These happened when there are few opportunities that give room for the project to be conducted. The external risk seems to have a bigger impact on the project as they affect the multiple parts of the project in uncertain condition and time. Other effects the project because of the slight.
Risk mitigation
There may be many factors that pertain the project management that may cause the problem to the achievements and the success of the team, these issues distract the team members from the main objective (Clarke, 1999). Once all the risk has been spotted out in the project, the project manager and the project team can come up with a plan to curb and mitigate the risks that happen. This strategy that is tabled will help to reduce the impacts of the risk or the unexpected outcome. The following are the ways in which the project team curbs the risks:
1. Risk avoidance
Make use of the alternative strategies that have a much higher probability of giving many high chances of success in terms of cost to accomplish the project tasks. One way that has been applied is the use of technological advances that may offer better performance for the project at a lower cost.
2. Risk Sharing
This mitigation strategy involves partnering with another partner in order to deal with the risk. For instance, most the international project organization s partner with others to mitigate the political, labor, legal and types of risk that face the companies. They do this by developing a joint venture between the companies and they decide they be located in one of the countries.
3. Risk reduction
The investment that funds the project organization helps to reduce the risk on the project. The project manager has a role in the risk reduction of the risk, they can hire experts who have the technical skills to review the technical organizational plan about the project the do an estimate of the project’s cost. The project management can hire highly skilled people to deal with much complex risk. This works out to reduce the impact of the risk on the project goals.
4. Risk transfer
The project team can shift the risk to the other team that is adjacent to it. These can be through the purchase of the insurance which can be a sample way in which the risk can be transferred to another party.in that case the project team does not allow the risk to destroy its operation but works towards transferring that risk to the insurance company that has mean to curb the risk
Organization and human resource.
There is a project management skill that any organization or the project manager out to have to run the project effectively. This skill makes the project a success. There is a need for competence there is a need for a blend of the experience that the team leader and the organization project manager should have. The project manager helps to coordinate the work by applying all the necessary knowledge their skills, techniques, and tools so that they can be able to meet all the project requirements. The way the project is run is very dependent on the experience that the team members and project manager have since they manage the project in line with the established plans (Thamhain & Wilemon, 1986)
Proper communication is emphasized which is the work of the project manager more so, they are urged to be knowledgeable in all way to maneuver through different tasks that the team encounters. The project team can have all the tool and skill but they do not know how to apply them appropriately. The following are the best project management skills.
Leadership skills, there is a skill that every project manager should have, this will entail managing and leading the team. More so motivating the team member to work towards the vision and mission. More so, the project needs a client to be served by the process. Communication involves the ability to pass information in an understandable manner. This skill leads to a better relationship between the manager and the team member.
Communication helps in the interpersonal skills to communicate with stakeholder and clients. The planning skills is the skill that many, managers do not pay much attention to but it has a huge role for the right outcome in the team. Through paying attention to the most important parts of the project like schedule will help the team achieve much than expected.
In the organization structure, a different project team member will fit in different places depending on their skill and expertise in handling the task. Some of the team members will be envisioning the desired changes, other will transform the community planning for other integration, and lastly, some of the project members are assigned the duties of promoting and encouraging those that they work with to promote change.
The responsibility assignment matrix (RAM) helps in the identification of the role of every member of the project team. The matrix is organized in a way that it is visually clear the role each person has in the accomplishment of the goal of the team
| Role /
task |
John | James | Mary |
| Provide testimony | responsible | accountable | accountable |
| Make the documents | informed | accountable | responsible |
| Manager project | informed | Responsible | informed |
Conclusion
The end analysis of the project is, communication is very important between the project manager and the stakeholder and should be conducted in a well-organized in a way that it reaches the intended person on time and in an understandable manner. On the other hand, proper means or medium of communication matter and the different roles that are assigned to team member make them easier to accomplish the tasks since they are allocated in accordance with the skill each team member have.
References Pinto, J. K., & Slevin, D. P. (1987). Critical factors in successful project implementation. IEEE transactions on engineering management, (1), 22-27. Thamhain, H. J., & Wilemon, D. L. (1986, June). Criteria for controlling projects according to plan. Project Management Institute. Clarke, A. (1999). A practical use of key success factors to improve the effectiveness of project management. International journal of project management, 17(3), 139-145.
