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Program communication

Published on November 29, 2018   29 min

A selection of talks on Management, Leadership & Organisation

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0:00
Hello. My name is Solvej Rasmussen. I work as a communication specialist with an IT provider in Denmark. Today, I'm going to talk to you about Program Communication.
0:13
A little bit about myself: I graduated from the Danish School of Journalism in 1998. For a couple of years, I worked as a news reporter in newspapers, but my professional interests led me to shift to corporate communications. I have experience from public administration and projects within public authorities. I have added to my education with courses in project management, and in all areas of communication including strategy, web design, social media, and video editing.
0:48
This is three people having a meeting. They're starting up a big project together. Let's say it's an IT project. One is the customer, one is the manager at the supplier, and one is a specialist who has been hired for the project as a consultant. They're all saying the same thing. This is going to be good. It makes them happy because they are all in total agreement. They go back and tell that to their stakeholders, employees, and teammates. The only problem is that six weeks later they're all unhappy and in total disappointment because the customer wanted state-of-the-art website user experience. The department manager wanted state-of-the-art agile project management, and the specialists wanted state-of-the-art interactive infographics. Furthermore, the 200 stakeholders, employees, and teammates in the project are unhappy because they also thought they had a clear idea of what they were going to do. Now, everybody is confused. The obvious point of this story is that we need communication in order to cooperate effectively. But, why exactly? We all feel that we communicate quite clearly. These three people didn't misunderstand each other because they were stupid or cunning. They misunderstood because they failed to identify information needs along the way. In a meeting, or a project, or in any cooperation between people, a dedicated communication effort has to be made to create in all participants the same understanding of objectives, priorities, methods, status, et cetera. The purpose of this talk is to show you how to set up communication structures in your project, so that you can achieve this vital common understanding,