Information resources project management communication: personal and environmental barriers

Knowledge is more than the retrieval of sets of information: it is the task of explaining them and contextualizing them and empowering the information to change the face or workings of a corporation. Placed in this sophisticated role, 20th century project managers now find themselves revolutionizing the concept of what information and information management means to themselves and their corporations. The Information Resources Project Manager (IRPM), the program/project manager leading a multi-departmental or multi-organizational ad hoc project, is becoming the maker of meaning and can become the driver of organizational learning. The task undertaken by IRPMs often may be to help their organizations make sense of their interpretations of their environment. To flourish in this role, the IRPM must constantly be aware of the barriers to effective communications. This brief theoretical review of communications barriers serves as a checklist for the IRPM whose attention must be directed more and more heavily to audience and the very humanness of communications.