Risk Management for Communication

One area of communication planning work that can be forgotten is dealing with the response.  Some communications will provoke an adverse reaction. Others asking for feedback will get a greater response than expected. 

Make resource available in the plan to deal with the expected amount and make sure that the risk management plan has included how to deal with the unexpected. This is one area where not having a real plan to back up the risk that has been discussed can really derail a project.

For each of your planned communications assess the cost and impact if:

• the person you intend to communicate with doesn’t get the message
• the person you communicate with doesn’t like the message and what action they might take
• the person you communicate with is over-enthused about the message and what action they might take
• the person you want to communicate with the project does want to engage
• more people respond than you’ve estimated
• fewer people respond to your message than you need

For each of these situation, plan in advance when you’ll decide if there is a problem, who will manage your actions to deal with the problem, what you’ll do, who you’ll involve and what budget you need to manage these eventualities. 

Make sure you have  diary time at appropriate points for the people involved to be available to respond – and a way to let them know if this time is not needed.