The Chess Game of Project Communications

Project communications cannot be thoroughly planned at the start of a project. Instead, project teams should open their effort with a few well-planned communications and then engage in a middlegame of dialog with stakeholders. If need be, they should pull their king into the game at the end to address any recalcitrant stakeholder concerns.

21 March 2024

It is tempting to try to plan out all of the communications for a project at its start. After all, this is when most of the other project planning is completed, so why shouldn’t communications be planned at this time as well? The simple answer is that project teams do not know enough about how stakeholders will respond to the project at its start to accurately plan what communications will be needed.

The best project communication efforts create a dialog between the project team and the rest of the project’s stakeholders. As the project team cannot know ahead of time how other stakeholders will respond to the project, a dialog with stakeholders cannot be fully planned at the start of a project.

Instead of trying to plan all of the communications for a project at its start, project teams should approach communications in a manner similar to how many chess players approach matches. Most chess players view matches as progressing through three distinct phases: opening, middlegame, and endgame, and they have particular strategies for how they play in each of these phases.

During the opening phase of a chess game, each player typically plays a series of predetermined moves, and neither player deviates from their planned moves unless they absolutely have to. A chess player has two objectives during the opening phase of the game. First, the player wants to strategically distribute their chess pieces on the board in a way that gives them the best avenues for attack and defense later in the game. Second, they want to try to determine their opponent’s strategy for the match by observing how they position their pieces on the board.

The opening phase of a project’s communication effort should proceed in a manner similar to how chess players start matches. The project team should plan their initial set of project communications and then rigidly stick to this plan unless a dire need to deviate from it arises. They should also closely monitor how stakeholders respond to the communications they put out and use these responses to try to determine points of potential resistance to the project and how to increase support for it.

Some common opening communications include explaining what the project is, why it is being undertaken, the benefits of making any planned changes, the risks of not making such changes, important project dates, and how stakeholders can provide feedback on the project and get questions answered.

After chess players complete their opening moves, the match enters the middlegame phase. This is typically the longest phase of the game and consists of a back-and-forth between players in which each tries to successfully execute their game strategy while simultaneously defending against the other player’s moves. This phase of the game mimics a dialog between two people in that each player presents forth their position, and then the other player responds. Middlegame is typically the most complex part of a chess match and the outcome of most matches is determined during this phase of the game.

After a project team releases the first few communications for a project, the project’s communication effort should enter a phase that closely resembles the middlegame of a chess match. During this communications phase, the project team should release a few communications addressing specific topics (make their chess move), watch how stakeholders respond to these communications (the stakeholders’ chess move), and then release a few more communications addressing the feedback they received from stakeholders. This process should ideally continue until the project team has addressed the majority of stakeholder concerns and garnered significant support for the project. Like the middlegame of chess, this phase of a project’s communication effort is typically the most complex and often determines how well the overall communication effort fairs.

The final phase of a chess match is called endgame. This phase of a game begins when most of each player’s chess pieces have been removed from the board. Each player may still have a few strong pieces (queen, bishop, rook, knight) left on the board, but most pieces have already been exchanged. Unlike during other phases of a chess match, one player often has a distinct advantage during endgame. Unless this player makes a mistake, the outcome of the match is often already largely determined. Another aspect of endgame is that kings go from being primarily a protected piece during the earlier phases of the game to an offense piece during endgame.

Like most chess pieces are exchanged during middlegame, most stakeholder concerns should be addressed during the middle phase of a project’s communication effort. Ideally, by the time the project enters its final days, the project team should have already won the support of most stakeholders. The team should be in a position where, so long as they do not make a mistake, support for the project is already secured. Occasionally, however, some stakeholder concerns persist until late in a project. When this happens, a project team should make a strong effort during the project’s final phase to resolve these recalcitrant concerns before closing out the project, even if this requires enlisting the help of individuals higher up in the organization. If a project team has been holding its king in reserve up to this point, it is time to bring them into play.

While there are many similarities between how most chess matches are played and how most project communication efforts should be approached, there is one significant way in which they differ. Chess matches are, by their very nature, antagonistic affairs. Each player in a chess match is trying to defeat the other player. Project communications should not be viewed in this manner. While the phases of a project’s communication effort mirror the phases of a chess match, the objective of project communications is not to defeat stakeholders, but to ensure their concerns are heard and appropriately addressed so that the project results in a win for the project team and all other stakeholders.

While it can be tempting to try to plan all of the communications for a project at its start, it is much wiser to view a project’s communication effort like the phases of a chess game. During the opening part of a communication effort, a project team should release a planned set of communications that well positions them to respond to future stakeholder concerns. During this phase of communications, the project team should also closely monitor stakeholder feedback in hopes of learning as much as possible about stakeholder concerns about the project. Once a project team completes its opening set of communications, it should seek to engage in a back-and-forth dialog with stakeholders about their concerns. This dialog aims to accurately understand and address as many stakeholder concerns as possible before entering the project’s final phase. As a project gets close to completion, a project team should make one final push to resolve any remaining stakeholders’ concerns, even if doing so requires intervention from individuals higher up in the organization. Throughout all of this, project team members should remember that while their efforts mimic the phases of a chess match, their desired outcome is much different – namely, a win for everyone.