Communications is 90% ? No Way!(?)

All the gurus say communication is 90% of the project manager’s job.

Thanks, gurus. That leaves us10% for everything else, including lunch.

So what’s a PM to do? Skip lunch? Never!

Surely “everything else” takes up more than 10%. Just look at what we do all day:

  • Get people together for meetings and facilitate those. Okay, well, that’s communication, I guess.
  • Create documents such as charters, work breakdown structures, minutes and threatening emails. This isn’t communication, it’s giving people the info they need to… oh, wait. Yes it is.
  • Navigate the murky waters of risk, which involves meetings to identify and mitigate them, publishing risk mitigation plans, building risks into the project plan, and so on. Now, this involves an advanced set of techniquest that are, um… mostly communication.
  • Follow up on issues, find solutions to problems and generally keep the ball rolling. Which is Business Management! Which is communication, mostly, when you think about it.
  • Manage budgets! Here we go. This is a numbers exercise, not a communication exercise. Until you tell somebody about it and have to explain it, I guess. Which you always have to do. So… drat… more communication.

Well, shucks. Maybe 90% of what we do really iscommunication.

Except for lunch. I can do that without communicating with a soul. Unless I go to lunch with someone, in which case… we communicate.

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