67: Communication Breakdown
When I was still leading projects, one of the habits we usually had in end of the project was an OFI, opportunity for improvement, session. In practice it meant that every second year people vomited everything they could remember, from that project into stickers or directly into written document. The outcome of that session was then handed over to the next project, which basically ignored it. As you can se I do not have many good memories about OFI work, but I do remember the topic that always ended up number 1 for the improvement proposals. It was always communication, different challenges in communication and proposals for improvement in communication.
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What I did not see or know then, was that a project is just an illustration of the organisational structure that has created the project. So all communication challenges within projects, they are actually communication challenges inherited from the organisation, with all the politics, silos and broken system conditions. This cannot be fixed unless the underlying problems are solved.
Project is an illustration of the underlying organisation,
with all of its flaws inherited
So “cure” for a proper transformation is that much deeper organisational change is needed, unless we want to do many small OFI sessions in cross functional teams and wonder why communication is still not working. Co-location helps on the communication issues but if there are existing organisational barriers within a team it is impossible to get the real promise of transformation realised. Therefore in a successful transformation change is two-fold: it comes from the top and from the bottom. That creates the base for better and improving communication, helps people to see the real problems and provides clarity for next level organisation
where communication is replaced with collaboration.
