Communication.
A simple enough word that in recent years with the advancement of technology has come to mean even more than previously thought. It used to be that effective communication was the way in which you spoke to a person. Now with email, text messaging, IM, Skype, Twitter and Facebook, communication has changed into a completely different beast. When I took business communications at Carolina (the real Carolina, USC) we learned about how to send memos, letters and even resumes. Now that I am in the business world, I am finding that things I thought were common practice are not. I am realizing that I have to change the way that I send and receive email. Now I respond to about half of the emails I receive on my cell phone. I find that now I have to copy people in, send response timelines and put very accurate subject lines. In college, I have found that these simple “rules of thumb” are not necessarily practices I have been embracing. The time has come where these are no longer suggestions but necessities. I thought that it would be difficult in mastering one area of communication, but in the project management field it is necessary to be effective in all areas.