The Gray Principle: Update and Connect through Intensive Communication

Chester Barnard, who was a telecommunications executive and author of Functions of the Executive, an influential twentieth-century management book, asserted that “the first function of the executive is to develop and maintain a system of communication.”1 Similarly, Frederick Brooks, best known as the “father of the IBM System/360,” argued that “the project managers chief daily task is communication, not decision-making.”2 On the basis of a review of more than 50 studies of the communication patterns of managers at all levels, Raymond Panko concluded that “managers spend about 85% of their day communicating.”3 In a recent study of ten highly successful on-site construction project managers, who were each systematically observed on the job for one week, it was found that 76 percent of their time, on average, was dedicated to verbal communication alone (meetings, both planned and unplanned, and telephone calls).4