Tag Archives: Communications

Uncategorized

Prioritize, plan, perform

Leave a comment

Damn obvious, I hear you say. In fact, it’s the simplest of action plans for any function, but it’s also one which is often overlooked or forgotten. As in really often.

Communications, like any other function, is a job with never-ending jobs; updating the intranet, writing articles, preparing speeches, finalizing strategy documents for business units, updating social media accounts, running team meetings, finalizing annual reports, helping colleagues with their presentations, updating templates, and the list goes on and on.

Quite frankly, I enjoy doing all the above – it’s fun, which is why it’s sometimes hard to say no to the constant and persistent requests that come our way.

I also believe in a healthy work balance, and frown upon people’s claims that they are “too busy” – I also wrote a blog piece about that.

However, I appreciate that people face very challenging targets and many companies expect their employees to work that extra bit to prove that they can do it in higher positions. If you ask me, it’s a convenient way for a company to pay less for more. I know – I did it for the greater part of my working life.

Now, I believe that while I should give my utmost, and also work day and night in certain exceptional cases, I also think we really need to prioritize and do the most important jobs first.

I love alliterations, so Prioritize, Plan, Perform is a no-brainer.

  1. Prioritize

‘Ask the comms guy’ is something that has followed me around for some time. I’m mainly to blame as I like helping people. But there are company priorities that need to be respected, which means that if I prioritize uploading a yammer post on the company party (because colleagues want to see the photos…) rather than deal with finalizing the annual report, something is wrong.

  • Plan: The comms goals should also align with and contribute to functional and company goals. This is why you need to plan properly and block your calendar to make sure you get the important things done first. Also, planning helps manage expectations.
  • Perform: Once you know what your goals and, you know what you need to do. It sounds simple because it is. A cluttered desk, figuratively speaking, means you’ll probably do the things you see first rather than what is important – or you’ll do nothing at all because you have no idea where to start from. Planning takes two forms – yearly and weekly. The former involved more generic operational planning, while the latter deals with more detailed work on what’s to be done.

It’s easy – no prioritization means an inability to plan (or follow a plan) and hence perform. And remember, other people’s priorities are just that. You will find that people thrown in seemingly super important facts that may make you think that their priorities are more important than yours. That’s rubbish.

Incidentally, if you are organized, you’ll find there is more time to be able to help colleagues with their comms tasks. Start today.

Thoughts

It’s about people

Leave a comment

I generally advocate for communication tools that reach a targeted audience, or as large a number of people as possible – shotgun communications sort of thing, where you try to hit everything in sight.

That’s my job.

Over the years, I have developed and created tools that seek to do just that, be they press releases, internet sites, intranet site, and a pile of other tools.

But there are instances where leaders need to stop depending on their communications people to get a message across. Sometimes, you need to just stop and talk to people and tell them what a great job they are doing. Or just say hello.

It’s like having a target audience of one person. Just one, face to face, no phones or intranets, no memos (do people still use memos?) nor instant messaging, Skype or anything. Just two people, speaking.

You’d think this was as obvious as boneless bananas, but apparently it isn’t.

Like when a colleague was looking unhappy, and it transpired that she had done a great deal of work and believed that nobody noticed. But they did, only nobody bothered to tell her.

I mentioned that her work was appreciated and somebody said that she had sorted out an area in her department that was a huge mess before she had arrived. Her face lit up, and then she opened up to me on how she was feeling sad because she had done a lot of work and felt unappreciated.

Sometimes, we communicate the big things and forget the small. Only the small can have a far larger impact in both the short and long run.

Communications isn’t just about intranet articles, press releases, yammer posts, and fancy events – it’s about people.

Thoughts

Limited resources requires better focus

Leave a comment

Communications is a vast field with numerous great tools and possibilities – pity that many companies treat the field as a ‘nice to have’ as opposed to a ‘must have’.

We all know that resources are limited. But as a consummate professional, I feel I can’t turn someone down when they come for help, whether it is just a simple proof-reading task or helping with the creation of a product PR plan or communications launch strategy for the company’s brand new corporate identity.

Ideally, we’d have enough members in the team to provide offer full-service communications to any colleague who asks, but this is not the case.

The answer does not lie in saying no. Well, it does, but just saying no still leaves colleagues in difficulty. The Polish say ‘not my circus, not my monkeys’, but don’t we all love monkeys?

The answer is to focus on the most important business goals and direct your limited resources towards helping the company achieve its strategic goals.

One way of doing this is to adopt a tiered approach, meaning the communications team that lacks resources (that probably includes most) determines beforehand what it should work on and what it should turn down.

The manner in which this is done depends on the company – CEB Gartner suggest six tiers, ranging from complete support and funding, to no support at all depending on the importance of the goal. The bottom tiers are not abandoned to themselves but offered a external agency / freelance support through which their (communication) needs can be met.

The list could include PR agencies, creative agencies, social media experts, writers, photographers, taxi companies, and a whole lot more.

Having previously arranged contracts with agreed-upon hourly or fixed rates, business partners within the company do not need to find appropriate agencies, not forge relationships, or get Legal to help with contracts and that sort of work that generally makes matters complicated. Partners know who to contact, and also what costs are involved.

Turning colleagues down and directing them towards a different solution which also involves budget will result in push back. But you know what? You are in a professional environment, not a Kindergarten dealing with an unruly child. And people should act that way.

Dedicate enough time to plan this well – this will allow you in the long-run to focus on what you really need to focus on.

Determine your final goal, possibly your company’s strategic goals, and work backwards from there. Whichever way you go, you have to have a clear focus – if you know where you’re going, you’ll know when you arrive.