Communicate. And then communicate again. And again… (ad nauseum)

As both a project manager and the COO at my company, communication is a huge part of my job. Yes, some might say that too many emails is a waste of time (and I would agree), but how do you define what “too many” is? One of my absolute favorite career blogs to follow is www.azzarellogroup.com. Patty has a great way of getting to the point very quickly. She recently posted a series of blog entries on ”What Good General Managers Do”. I followed one of her suggestions, to meet with EVERYONE in your direct line of reports, not just those who directly report to you. I was impressed with how much I learned about the company and what we did well, and what we did not-so-well. I basically gave everyone a chance to meet with me for 30+ minutes (I always left myself an extra half an hour afterwards just in case it ran over). I found that I learned both what people did in their roles (many of which I knew very little about) as well as learned what things we could improve upon. One group ends up cutting and pasting information into three different places. Needless to say, this is definitely an area I placed a high priority on getting something improved ASAP!

The other thing that I learned was that with our new change in strategy, while everyone could nod their heads and repeat the words coming from the top, when I asked them to elaborate on what they thought that meant, where the boundaries of what we did now are vs. what we did before, etc., I found that no two answers were alike. In fact, multiple folks’ answers were “we’re going back to doing what we used to do a year ago”, however we had at least 10% of the company that wasn’t there a year ago (including me!). So we’re finding out what the strategy should be by asking co-workers what we did a year ago. No joke!

I continued to push my CEO to more clearly communicate what the real strategy was moving forward, to document this, to answer specific questions coming from “the troops”. If the company as a whole doesn’t know what they are doing, they will all row in different directions. Patty Azzarello just recently had this blog posting on why people don’t do what you say. Patty highlights that for the upper-level management, they were intricately involved in creating that strategy, so in their heads, it makes perfect sense. However, everyone else who wasn’t there for all those sleepless nights of churning through the details doesn’t internalize what you want them to really grasp after hearing it once or even two or three times. The other really important point she makes is that we should thank employees for what they have done so far, especially if that work is now no longer valid based on the new strategy. One of my direct reports championed major changes to our website (and I mean major) that had us moving in the right direction of our old strategy. Unfortunately, when that strategy changed, those changes were no longer needed and may have even hurt the new strategy. But I let her know how pleased I was with all her work and that the work had done exactly what she had set out to do, even if that was no longer needed.

In her blog entry, Patty highlights the steps to go through in order to really truly communicate the new strategy. One of the most important steps (in my mind) is communicating it over and over. Having folks be able to repeat it back, ask questions, internalize it. Without this, they may still be rowing in 10 different directions (or maybe have even increased to 15!) because they each heard a very different message from you.

So yes, communicate. Do it again. And again. Ad nauseum. The key is making sure you’re not just sending out email after email or sitting in a meeting saying exactly the same thing with the same people staring back at your with blank faces. Document what the strategy is and email it out. Invite questions from your employees. Do some role playing where you can say “we have a customer who is calling about XYZ. How would we handle that call?”. Understand areas in your strategy where people get what you’re saying and where they need more clarity. And then work to clarify that. Have your upper-level managers communicate back to you what they think the strategy is in their own words. Is it consistent with what you think it should be? If not, guaranteed they are getting questions from their direct reports and won’t be answering those in the way you expect, but most likely their version is the one their reports will hear loud and clearly. Is that what you want?

 

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