Join hosts Merv Jersak and Tim Jerome as they delve into the crucial elements of project management focusing on enhancing written communication skills. This episode emphasizes the importance of clarity, urgency, and simplicity in business communications, aiming to help project managers, especially those new to the field, improve their documentation practices. The discussion highlights strategies such as stating the purpose upfront, avoiding multiple topics in a single email, and maintaining contemporaneous notes. The episode also touches on the permanence of written communication and how it can impact project success.

Main Take-Aways

Project managers put things in writing for several reasons including accuracy, clarity, appropriateness, and permanency. The human factors in written communication are considered both from the author’s and the receiver’s perspectives. Topics covered in this episode:

• remember that we are first and foremost business communicators
• be clear and have the appropriate sense of urgency in written communication
• consider how you communicate via email
• document for posterity
• be contemporaneous with your written communication
• review and improve your writing skills
• adapt your writing style
• provide optimal information in writing
• be conscious of where you maintain sensitive information

Show Notes

Today’s Project Managers Coffee Chat: Mastering Written Communication for Maximum Clarity and Effectiveness

00:27 The importance of understanding that as project managers, you are business communicators.

01:06 Consider your audience whenever you put something in writing. Be clear in your writing and consider the appropriate urgency in providing the communication.

03:25 Email Communication has best practices such as focusing on only one topic in the email, responding as such and with urgency, avoiding making excuses in the written communication, stating the purpose of the email in the first sentence, etc.

06:36 The role of documentation in project management and its usefulness for later retrieval of the information it contains.

08:43 Written documentation is most credible when captured contemporaneously and reviewed by all appropriate individuals.

10:16 It is useful to review your past written communication to see where it needs improvement as you progress in your career. Look for ways to communicate more clearly and in different ways. Practice writing skills to ensure continued improvement.

12:29 Focus on delivering the applicability and the optimal amount of information that your audience needs.

13:50 Adapt your writing style to formal or conversational tone depending on the nature of the communication.

15:54 Remember that if it’s in writing, it’s permanent.

17:09 Think about how you would handle sensitive information. Where do you document it and for what purpose?

19:08 A short summary emphasizing the need to consider your audience and using written documentation appropriately.