juggling priorities

1. "Where do we add the most value?" is a question we ask throughout the first Black Belt module. Where should we ideally invest the biggest proportions of our time to make the most difference to our organisations?  And how ARE we spending our time today?

The answer we often find is that we're spending much of our time 'doing the doing' - writing, organising, sending out, fire-fighting ... when we'd actually like to spend more of our time supporting and coaching leaders and acting as consultants - understanding where the business is trying to get to, and working out what role communication can plan in trying to help it get there.

But if you do resolve to spend more of your time strategising, who's going to do the doing?  Particularly if you're in a standalone role or part of a small team that's already under pressure, it's hard to know where on earth to start. 

What's your experience?

Practical examples please, from anyone who has managed to start shifting the balance without doubling the size of your team or budget.  Here are some quick thoughts to get things started

1. Get simple processes in place, to save having to re-invent the wheel every time.  For example, make sure you have a basic suite of channels, with clearly defined purposes, so there's a natural route to communicate things such as changes to processes, business results, senior leadership messages etc.  Put together a simple template that you'll use to put together project comms plans. 
2. Train other people. What activities are you carrying out that other people could do for you?  If you invest in training, templates, toolkits and hand-holding up front, you'll reap the benefits down the line.
3. Imagine your resource has been halved and you have no choice but to stop doing some things or find other ways around them. What will you do?  I once had no choice but to reduce a team from 60 people to 6, in the space of 2 weeks. It's amazing how it focused our minds. Where previously we'd have said 'but we can't ...' now, we had to - and we did. Once you've decided how you'll cope, fill up your new-found time with something else.
4. Get yourself a network of communications champions, if you haven't got one already. Where there's no formal resource in place, a network of people who give a couple of hours a week to communication can take some of the load away from you. You'll need the support of senior leaders to identify one or two people from each business area.
5. Pull out all the stops to deliver an example of what you'd like to do more of. Make a success of it, so that people want more of it, and then give them the choice.  'I'd love to do something like that for you, but all my time is being taken up booking rooms for the project roadshow. If your PA could take over booking the rooms, that will give me time to look at this for you instead."
6. Make the choice. Sometimes, people tell me they've made a shift simply because they resolved to, and they started acting differently.  We once saw somebody come back on the second module looking like a new woman just because she'd done exactly that. Sometimes the only thing holding us back is our own perspective on how things have to be.

Over to you ...

Sue

Comments

[Liam]

This is a really good point Sue. I hope it gets people going....

You often go along to conferences and hear people say "..and then the very next day the CEO asked me to rewrite the whole business strategy and help recruit a new Finance Director..."

Obviously it DOES happen to some people and I'm always interested to know exactly what it was that they did differently and, more importantly, how long did it take?

Howard Gardner's book "Changing Minds" makes the point that change of this sort is inevitably gradual rather than sudden (despite the fact we all THINK that changes happen in Eureka moments).

[Mark Darby]

The most thumbed, coffee stained, post-it noted section of my Black Belt Programme binder is the article by Kristin Kelley in the appendix. I think whar she says can help start you on the right route of ball juggling.

When I started at Visa, I took Kristin's number one question and asked it every Senior person I met. "What is the one thing Internal Communications can do for you to improve the performance of this company?"

I got 3 answers, frequently repeated.
1. Get employees to understand the business strategy.
2. Get dialogue going with employees on the organisational change programme.
3. Support HR in the delivery of the new Organisational Development programme.

I had these 3 drawn up as personal SMART objectives, and then worked with both my own team, and the other departments to work out who will deliver what.

The positives have been two-fold.

1. We've stopped doing quite a lot because it doesn't support those 3 objectives. Gone are departmental intranet sites, charity fundraising, birthday lunches.....

2. It's given us more umphh to say "No" to other work. Being able to say that we have 3 initiatives that will add the most value to the business this year, agreed by the management team, that will be measured - often stops people in their tracks.

If a project does require our help (because it fits into the 3 objectives) - then we make sure the person requesting works through the project with us to provide the resource.

There is still a great deal of ad hoc work to be done, and everything you have already suggested definately helps - especially templates.

Learning to say "No!" was the biggest step for all of us. Don't you agree that IC people are built to say "Yes!"? But we make damn sure that we deliver, and we deliver well on our 3 objectives - or else we will be up the river, missing all our paddles.