tag:blog.jackvinson.com,2007://1/tag:blog.jackvinson.com,2004://1.415- 2007-12-03T12:08:03Z Comments for Why do projects fail? Jack Vinson writes about knowledge management, personal effectiveness, theory of constraints and more. As of December 2007 Jack will likely start writing about product management too. Movable Type 4.01 tag:blog.jackvinson.com,2004://1.415.197 Comment from manasclerk on 2004-05-15 manasclerk http://www.processwrite.com/bloghost/manasclerk/ I'm not so sure that communication is the problem. We communicate all the time. Communication isn't really our problem. Peter Block makes the point that communication isn't our problem. We communicate all the time in real time with people all across the world and it isn't helping. If you tell you client something twice and he still doesn't seem to understand, it's not that he doesn't understand but that he does understand but he disagrees with you. You can't communicate more: you have to communicate _differently_. Talking more to him about how great your idea is won't help convince him. You have to change the conversation.

Communicating the wrong level of information (too much technical detail up the ladder, too strategic of detail down the ladder) for the person also produces disagreement. The radio technician who wanted to keep the radio in the "Escape from Our Moon" teamwork scenario (later post) just couldn't get up out of that level of detail: he was in the wrong place and no one was able to manage him so that he would feel respected for his expertise within the limited frame.

For me, saying that communication wasn't up to snuff was just a way to say that I had no idea why the project failed but it wasn't my fault! Indeed, looking back on failures now, it wasn't: the problem was systemic to the organization and could not be solved by me or by someone at my level, whether level within the organization, level of skill, or level of experience.

]]> 2004-05-15T20:44:09Z 2004-05-15T20:44:09Z