Measuring your effort

Thanks Melissa for the lead in

Well it is about time I wrote a few words on the Dojo and very soon we will be looking for guest bloggers on the site, so any volunteers?

Melissa is quite right about setting SMART objectives, some of our biggest failures is not planning out our measurement strategy as part of our communications strategy. You know their is nothing that can't be measured 'so Angela Sinickas keeps telling me!' But I am yet to give her a tough one she can't crack. The simplest thing is to turn any comms effort into something that is tangible 'numerical' so you can apply some type of financial return to it. Lets face it that's how we get runs on the board in our companies!

Let me take an example.. Say you are doing a comms campaign on safety in the office.. Your company has witnessed an increase in accidents caused by people tripping over people bags left on the floor near desks.. Firstly you need to check what measure is available to you, this could be some stats and associated costs of workcover from your HR department. You now have a baseline measure.. set yourself a realistic target (SMART), run your campaign to encourage safe practices of putting bags away in lockers etc.. Then check back in with the HR department to see what effect your communications have had.. If the amount of claims have gone down post your campaign, simply take the credit and celebrate:) If you find you have a senior team who usually don't believe you, when you show your worth.. Simply trial your campaign in one area of the company and do some comparative measures.. There is always more than one way... Anyway more on measurement later!

I also thought I would share the picture from our last Black Belt Program in Melbourne.. 20 wonderful people from around the country.. It is only a couple of months ago now.. But we had a wonderful hot 4 days in beautiful Mt Eliza.. Hope you are all completing those actions.