Growing up, I was surrounded by my dad’s books of classic science fiction. He had always had a fascination and interest in science, and the ‘hard’ science fiction of the Golden Age naturally attracted him. The cheap paperbacks and, much rarer, the hardbacks of that time still occupied many bookshelves in our house by the time I came along.

And so, with my own interest in science, and my voracious appetite for reading, I devoured novel after novel, anthology after anthology. I’ll be the first to admit that some of the stories were, well, awful. But many of them were amazing, in the truest sense of the word. The visions of the future, and the sometimes idealistic vision of human nature, could seem terribly profound and exciting to my adolescent self. At the time, some of these ideas of how the future could be inspired me, and some inspire me still.

But one type of story had a particular place in my heart. These were the generally short, but humorous tales – essentially long jokes. It seems many of the authors of the time enjoyed these, but the master, as far as I am concerned, is Isaac Asimov.

One of these stories is titled My Son, The Physicist. And I think this story actually describes something that can be useful to us in project management. (See? I did have a point with this rambling preamble.)

The story tells of the proud mother visiting her son, who works for a space agency, maintaining communications. But on the day she is visiting his workplace, the son, and the whole agency, are in uproar. They have received a communication from an expedition sent to Pluto years beforehand – an expedition which had been thought lost.

The problem is, Pluto is so far away that radio waves take hours to get there, and a reply takes the same time to get back. This means that an interrogation of the expedition will take a ridiculous amount of time.

But, of course, the mother saves the day, by advising her son to Just Keep Talking, and informing the expedition to do the same thing. In other words, pass on as much information as you can, and ask any questions as you go. The other side will push as much information back at you as they can, and slip answers in as and when they receive your questions.

In a way, this is what we need to do with project management. You must keep communicating all the time. Now, naturally you are unlikely to have a long timelag between either ends of your conversations! But even so, think about how we deal with information as a project manager. We pull in as much as we can, through checking the status of deliverables, getting updates on progress, receiving information on problems. We make sure everyone in the project keeps talking to us, to keep us up to date.

But we need to do the same as well. We need to make sure everyone else on the project has the information they need. We have to accept a stream of data coming in, but we also need to be sending one out as well. Sometimes we will be sending out a communication in response to a specific question, but other times we are pushing out information without being asked, to make sure everyone is informed.

For example, you may be sending a highlight report or status update to your Executive every week or month. You keep doing this without being asked – you send out that communication stream. But if the Executive specifically requests information on one particular area, you prepare that specially and send it out.

In other words, you keep up a constant stream of general communication, and slip in specific answers as and when needed. It’s important to share information on the project with those involved in it, even the day to day stuff – that way everyone has the background they need to understand where the project is going, and the knowledge to ask the right questions if they need more guidance.

So that’s my message to you about project communication – Just Keep Talking.