The attention economy has entered Project Management

lorenaflorian0
6 days ago
6 min read

Updated: 5 days ago

Project environments have never had more ways to communicate.

Email, Teams, dashboards, project management platforms, status reports and meetings allow information to move quickly across organisations. More recently, AI has made it possible to summarise discussions, analyse project data and generate updates with even greater speed.

In theory, this should make project communication easier.

In practice, many of the same challenges remain.

Important updates are overlooked. Decisions are delayed. Stakeholders miss information that has already been communicated. Risks are documented but do not receive attention until their impact becomes more immediate.

These situations are often treated as communication or stakeholder engagement problems. But there is another factor increasingly shaping how information moves through projects: attention.

As the volume of information within organisations grows, the challenge is no longer simply ensuring that information is available. It is ensuring that what matters can be recognised, understood and acted upon.

This is where the attention economy becomes relevant to project management.

The attention economy inside organisations

The attention economy is most commonly associated with digital platforms, where an almost unlimited amount of information competes for a limited amount of human attention.

The same principle increasingly applies inside organisations.

A project sponsor may move between leadership meetings, emails, dashboards, operational issues and several programs in a single day. Subject matter experts often contribute to projects alongside their existing responsibilities. Executives may receive updates from multiple teams, each with legitimate priorities and requests.

Within this environment, projects are competing for a share of stakeholder attention.

This does not necessarily mean stakeholders are disengaged. In many cases, they are navigating a high volume of information across competing priorities.

For project managers, this distinction matters.

A stakeholder communication plan may successfully define what needs to be communicated, when and through which channel. However, following the communication plan does not guarantee that the message has achieved its intended outcome.

Information can be delivered without being absorbed.

Why more information can create less clarity

There is a useful explanation for this in Cognitive Load Theory.

The theory recognises that working memory has a limited capacity. When people are required to process too much information at once, it becomes harder to identify what is important, connect information and make decisions effectively.

This has clear implications for project communication.

Consider a steering committee member receiving a 30-page pack containing schedules, financial information, risks, dependencies, milestones and status updates. The information may all be relevant and the reporting may satisfy every governance requirement.

But somewhere on page 17 is a decision that needs to be made by Friday.

The problem is not that the information is unavailable. It is that the stakeholder must process a significant amount of information before identifying what requires their attention.

This becomes more difficult when communication is fragmented across channels. A risk may be discussed in a meeting, recorded in a register, referenced in an email and eventually included in a project report.

The project has communicated extensively but the decision may still not happen.

Stakeholder engagement may have an attention problem

When stakeholders do not respond, project teams often increase communication.

Another reminder is sent. Another meeting is scheduled. More detail is added to the report. Another dashboard is created.

Individually, each action may be reasonable. Collectively, they can increase the amount of information stakeholders need to navigate.

This creates a paradox in project communication:

More information does not always create more transparency.

A dashboard containing thirty metrics technically provides more information than one containing ten. It does not necessarily provide greater clarity.

Similarly, sending every stakeholder the same comprehensive project update may be efficient for the project team, but it transfers the responsibility for finding what matters to the recipient.

Effective stakeholder engagement therefore requires more than distributing information. It requires understanding what different stakeholders need from that information.

A project team may require operational detail. A steering committee may need exceptions, dependencies and decisions. An executive sponsor may primarily need to know whether intended outcomes remain achievable and where intervention is required.

The underlying project information may be the same.

How it is communicated should not be.

From reporting information to supporting decisions

One practical way to respond to this challenge is to design important project communication around three elements:

Signal → Context → Action

Signal: What has changed?

Start with the information that deserves attention.

A milestone has moved. A risk has increased. A dependency has failed. Costs have changed. A decision is approaching.

The signal allows the stakeholder to understand immediately why the communication matters.

Context: Why does it matter?

Provide enough information to understand the consequence.

Does it affect schedule, budget, benefits, customers or another workstream? What happens if nothing changes?

Context connects project information to the outcomes the stakeholder is responsible for.

Action: What needs to happen next?

Make the required response clear.

Is a decision required? Who owns it? By when? Is the communication simply for awareness?

This final step is particularly important because information without a clear next action can easily remain information.

Consider the difference between:

"Please see attached the updated risk register for this week's review."

and:

"Supplier approval has moved by two weeks, placing the September milestone at risk. Executive approval of Option B is required by Friday to maintain the current delivery date."

The detailed risk register can still sit behind the message, but the stakeholder no longer needs to search through it to understand why their attention is required.

Designing for attention does not mean removing detail

There is a risk that attention-focused communication is interpreted as making everything shorter.

That is not the objective.

Complex projects require detailed documentation. Governance requires evidence. Risk analysis requires depth. Important decisions often require significant context.

The distinction is between information that needs to exist and information that needs immediate attention.

A detailed business case may need to be 40 pages long. An executive should not need to read all 40 pages to discover that a critical decision is required tomorrow.

Effective project communication can therefore operate in layers.

The key message is visible first. The implication and required action follow. Supporting analysis remains available for stakeholders who need greater depth.

This preserves rigour while reducing the effort required to identify what matters.

What happens when AI increases the volume?

AI creates an interesting tension for project management.

It has significant potential to improve project communication. Meeting summaries can be generated automatically. Large amounts of project data can be analysed quickly. Reports can be drafted faster and updates tailored to different audiences.

But the same capability also makes it easier to produce more information.

If every meeting generates a summary, every dashboard produces commentary and every project update can be expanded instantly, organisations may find themselves with more content without necessarily having more clarity.

This makes human judgement particularly important.

AI can help process information, identify patterns and produce summaries. But project managers still provide the context behind that information: which change is significant, which risk requires escalation, which dependency needs intervention and which decision cannot wait.

As information becomes easier to produce, the ability to prioritise it may become more valuable.

Rethinking project communication

Attention is not something a project manager can control.

Stakeholders will continue to balance competing responsibilities, and not every project message will receive immediate attention.

What project teams can influence is how difficult they make it for people to recognise what matters.

This means reviewing communication practices with the same discipline applied to other areas of delivery.

Does every recurring meeting still serve a purpose?
Does every dashboard metric support a decision?
Are multiple channels communicating the same information?
Can stakeholders quickly identify what has changed since the previous update?
Is it clear when action is required?

These are relatively simple questions, but they shift the focus of project communication from the volume of information produced to the usefulness of that information.

Final thought

Project management has traditionally placed significant emphasis on ensuring that the right information reaches the right stakeholders at the right time.

That principle remains important.

What has changed is the environment in which that information is received.

Stakeholders are operating across more channels, projects and sources of information, while digital tools and AI are making it increasingly easy to generate additional reports, updates and analysis.

The response should not necessarily be more communication.

It should be more deliberate communication.

In an environment where information is increasingly abundant, clarity may be one of the most valuable capabilities a project team can provide.

In a world of information overload, clarity matters.

If your projects need clearer communication, stronger governance and more confident decision-making, PMLogic can help.