Book review: So What?
December 14, 2009 @ A Girl's Guide to Project Management from Elizabeth
“Do you have any advent calendars?” I asked the shop assistant.
She grunted and pointed to a display in the window. They were ordinary 2010 wall calendars.
“They’re not really what I was after,” I said.
She grunted again and pointed to a pile of diaries.
“Not really advent calendars,” I said, more to myself than to her – I’d realised that I wasn’t going to get a decent answer. Was my request unclear?
I tried another two shops before ending up in my last choice: WHSmith. The man made me wait while he finished a phone conversation, but at least he acknowledged I was standing there.
“Do you have any advent calendars?” I asked, sounding like a stuck record.
They did. Not only did he explain the options, he went and found them for me and put away the ones I didn’t want. Hurrah! Someone had listened to what I was saying, interpreted it and given me a useful response that resulted in me buying a product. We had both got something out of the conversation: and isn’t that what communication really boils down to?
So What?: How to Communicate What Really Matters to Your Audience
Mark Magnacca’s book is quick to read, easy to digest and isn’t rocket science. But it is surprising how often we need a reminder about what people are really like, and how best to do our jobs. He says:
The people you are trying to communicate with, sell to or reach don’t really care about you, or what you have to offer, until they know how what you have can benefit them.
That’s true whether you are in a job interview for a new project management position, or facing a grumpy stakeholder, or trying to convince a team member why they have to hit a project milestone. Magnacca points out that most of us have learned that the most important thing in communicating is to get our message across – the message that is important to us. He flips this on its head and reminds us that communication fails unless the person understands (and acts on) the message. This might have worked when people had very little choice about what they did or who they did it with, but nowadays there are a multitude of options, for project management consultancy, training, seminars, or just other things to get on with instead of listening to you drone on about status reports. Instead of thinking about yourself, Maganacca recommends answering the following questions before you make a presentation:
- For what reason are you giving the presentation? (And I include in that small ‘presentations’ to your sponsor or project team in meetings.)
- Why is this important to the audience? (The ‘So What’ of the title)
- What do you want to happen next?
While a lot of Magnacca’s book reads like it is aimed at salespeople, the principles are applicable to anyone communicating in a project environment too. We don’t often get a lot of time to pitch for a contingency budget, or a scope change, or to justify why something can’t be achieved within the current quality constraints. Anything that can make those exchanges go a bit better has to be welcomed.
The point I particularly liked in the book was that we should all research our audiences before speaking to them. If you are going to meet an interviewer, what can you find out about them in advance? What about your project sponsor or a major supplier? With the internet there is no reason why you can’t do you own research on your audience and then tailor your communication appropriately.
Just a word of warning about that though: don’t freak your audience out by making it seem you are cyber stalking. Your research should be about professional things; mentioning that they are missing Gossip Girl by attending an evening seminar with you – when you know it is their favourite programme – is just going to sound weird.
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