Communicating in a project: plan, channels, email

A project manager spends most of their time communicating: with the team, the client, suppliers, bosses. Communication isn’t a side activity of the project: it is the means by which the project gets done. And like any tool, it can be used well or badly. Form, channel, timing and the trail it leaves all matter.

The communication plan

Its job is to make sure everyone involved is informed clearly, promptly and consistently about progress, risks, decisions and next steps. It is built from the stakeholder analysis, and answers a few questions:

1. Who we communicate with: who the recipients are, how much they count, what they need to know.
2. What and why: inform, involve, ask for a decision, get an approval.
3. At what level of detail: the marketing director and their assistant don’t need the same information.
4. On which channel: meeting, email, report, project platform, phone.
5. How often, and at which key moments.
6. Who handles it, for each recipient.

Person	Role	What they receive	How and when
Marketing director	Decides on strategy	Milestones and strategic decisions; only final approved files	Steering committee
Brand manager	Approves the outputs	Progress, materials to approve, strategic direction	Weekly alignment, copied on emails
Brand manager’s assistant	Operational contact	All operational matters and questions	Email and phone, daily

The plan needs reviewing: if communication isn’t achieving its purpose (decisions arriving late, people feeling left out, information not flowing), change it.

The right channel for each message

No channel is better than the others. There is the right channel for that message, to that person, at that moment.

Channel	Good for	Watch out for
Email	Informing several people, detailed instructions, keeping a record, avoiding pressure	It is asynchronous; when there are too many, they get ignored
Phone	Quick answers, delicate topics, avoiding misunderstandings, conveying tone	No record: send a written summary afterwards
Chat	Short, frequent exchanges	Important information gets lost in the flow
Meeting	Important decisions, complex matters, team spirit	It costs a lot of time; it needs an agenda and a summary
Project platform	Tasks, deadlines, documents, history	It only works if everyone uses it

A simple rule: if a message needs thinking about twice, if it is delicate or calls for looking after a relationship, pick up the phone. For a difficult message, asynchronous communication is almost never the right choice. Then, if needed, put in writing what was said.

Email, in detail

It is the most used tool, and therefore the one that does the most damage. A couple of famous episodes are enough to make the point: in 2009 the University of California, San Diego, mistakenly sent its acceptance email to some 28,000 applicants who had been rejected; in 2014 a Goldman Sachs contractor sent confidential information to a gmail.com address instead of gs.com, and the bank had to go to court to have it deleted.

Recipients

• Beware of autocomplete. For important emails, fill in the recipients only after you have finished and reread the text.
• To and Cc are not interchangeable. “To” is for whoever has to do something; “Cc” for whoever needs to know. If there are several people in “To”, it must be clear who does what.
• Cc carries weight. It can express support, but it can also embarrass someone in front of others, intentionally or not. It should be clear why someone is copied.
• Use Bcc with care. It can feel like talking behind someone’s back. And a Bcc recipient who replies to all reveals that they were there.
• Order matters, especially in formal contexts: first whoever has to act, or whoever holds the most senior role.
• Forwards and parallel threads. Before forwarding or replying, check that the chain doesn’t contain internal messages unsuitable for the client.

Subject line

On a phone it is often the only thing people read. “Urgent”, “Re: FYI”, a row of question marks: they say nothing. “Comments on the concept document”, “Wednesday’s meeting”, “Pitch deadline postponed”: they say everything. And if a new topic comes up in a conversation, it deserves a new email.

The text

• Clear and short: plain language, no jargon, only what is needed.
• Orderly: short paragraphs, one topic per paragraph; lists when they help.
• Explicit: which project, task or problem it is about, what you are asking, by when.
• A closing question, to check the message has been understood.
• Reread: before hitting send, always.
• Sober formatting: one typeface; bold and italics sparingly; colour only if it helps reading.

Tone

The psychologist Daniel Goleman has observed that email carries a negativity bias: if the content is neutral, we tend to read it as negative. The reader can’t hear our voice or see our face, reads at a moment of their own choosing, filtered by their mood, and we can’t correct a misunderstanding in real time. That is why it is worth spending one more sentence to make a friendly tone explicit, especially when the news isn’t good.

Punctuation carries weight too, and different generations read it differently: an exclamation mark that means enthusiasm to some sounds like shouting to others. When in doubt, restraint.

Documenting

Communicating isn’t enough: you also need to leave a trail. Decisions, changes, approvals must be written down somewhere they can be found again. And data must actually be usable: an archive where you can’t find anything is the same as no archive at all.