The PM Podcast on Web 2.0 Tools for Project Management

Have you subscribed to the PM Podcast yet?

The most recent episode of the program (which qualifies for PDUs from PMI incidentally) featured Dennis Brooke, a Senior Program Manager for GE Aviation, discussing web based project management communications tools and specifically Enterprise 2.0 project management tools.

Given our recent features on different options for communicating as a project manager, I found the episode to be especially timely. Check it out here, where you can read a partial transcript and listen to the whole episode for free.

Michelle LeBlanc is a Social Media Strategist at IIR USA with a specialization in marketing. She may be reached at mleblanc@iirusa.com.

Communication traps: Avoiding "Them" vs. "Us"

We discussed failures of communication earlier this week and today we want to discuss one major source of contention among stakeholders - "Them" vs. "Us." Thankfully, Bas De Baar over at Project Shrink gives us a great run-down of this roadblock and how to avoid it. He writes that he's found a useful framework for this purpose in Anxiety/Uncertainty Management, a theory developed by William Gudyfunst. This theory is used for analyzing effective communication and cultural adaption between people belonging to a certain group (ingroup) and strangers (outgroup). Effective communication and adaption occurs when there is a low anxiety towards strangers and a low uncertainty towards behavior.
So how can you make this happen with your team's communication process? We encourage you to check out Project Shrink for details and to enjoy a great video on the subject with Bas and Kimberly Wiefling.
What other strategies can keep communication in check? We'd like to hear your thoughts.