The importance of staying close to our project partners
As a consultancy organisation, we exist to support our clients — this includes making things as clear and easy for them throughout an engagement as possible, on top of the quality of the advice we provide at the end of the project.
We’ve found that setting up lean and consistent mechanisms for communicating with our client partners ensures we share our findings, progress, ideas approaches and concerns at the right times.
The type of work we do with our client partners does not occur in a way where they can casually ‘check in’ during an office walkaround or conversations by the printer or in the lunchroom. Instead, we need to maintain the confidence of our clients that our work will be delivered how and when it needs to be — and that we’ll keep them informed and updated along the way to avoid any surprises and enable them to brief their stakeholders.
Many of us work in a program or project environment with both internal and external stakeholders everyday, so we thought sharing an insight into how we make this happen can help others broader than just a consultancy-type engagement.
Setting up lean and consistent mechanisms for communicating with our client partners ensures we share our findings, progress, ideas approaches and concerns at the right times.
Setting up lean and consistent mechanisms for communicating with our client partners ensures we share our findings, progress, ideas approaches and concerns at the right times.
What we do at Beacon Strategies to keep our clients informed
A process we have in place here at Beacon Strategies as part of our routine project-level governance is our consistent ‘weekly status updates’. These emails are sent from us to our client in a consistent rhythm at the start or end of the week for each active project we are working on.
We know our clients are busy and their email inboxes are filling up, so we stick to a learn format and consistent structure each week:
Any internal updates that need to be communicated
What we did last week
What we’ll do this week
Any blockers or issues
We also include a link to our online project schedule, which allows the project team to find more information when they need it about where milestones are at, see upcoming deadlines and access all shared files and resources.
The value it has for our organisation
This small but important method of communication has considerable value both us and our clients in:
Providing a space for consistent and transparent communication that can be expected at the same time and in the same format each week
Offering assurance to our clients that we are on track from a timeframe perspective, or raising issues early and providing an explainer for why things are ‘stuck’
Avoiding miscommunication regarding a project’s intent or objectives
Helping us to identify where deeper communication is needed for any project blockers or issues
Applying this simple communication tactic in your own project or program management approach might offer you benefits in terms of project execution, relationship management, client/customer experience, stakeholder confidence and improved reputation.
Give it a try and let us know how it works for you!
Have any thoughts? We would love to hear from you! Send us an email via info@beaconstrategies.com or drop us a comment over on our social media using the buttons below.