Effective Communication - part 3

In everyday life births, weddings and deaths are communicated in a timely manner and widely for all to know. This picture is of me with my step grandson whose birth was widely broadcast, and only today I heard of the passing on my neighbour Bill and spent some time on the phone letting others in the village know of this sad news. Festive updates might be used to communicate what we've all been up to in the year since our last card, and use of social media certainly allows us to keep an eye on who's doing what, where, when and, complete with pictures, with whom.

Yet this need to communicate often goes out the window in business. That is we forget to communicate the news - often within the team - never mind with stakeholders. That is we need to think about timely communication of our own organisational equivalent of births, weddings, divorces, house moves, renovations, new cars, illnesses, fitness improvements, weight lost, degrees and exams passed, holidays (planned and taken), birthdays, deaths and so on. In other words we need to have an effective plan to let everyone, who needs to, know about the following:

• Organisational goals (and changes to them)
• Key success criteria for the business (updated as they change)
• New recruits
• New roles
• Changing governance or roles
• Departures
• Changing systems (often at the planning stage not just before we implement it)
• Changing processes and procedures
• Project kick offs
• Project status's
• Project, team and individual achievements
• Learning from project reviews 
• Where to go for help
• Learning and development opportunities
• Forthcoming changes
• Opportunities
• Threats
• Risks
• and so on

Remembering that these will all need tailoring for the different audiences and whilst some will be able to be achieved in an email others will need face to face meetings individually or in groups. 

What do you need to communicate and when will you do it?

Alison Smith

Inspiring change inside and out - in procurement and business more widely.

So far in this series on effective organisational communication I've covered the excuses we give for not communicating effectively and the need to plan and think about communication. Part 4 will consider the different methods of communicating, and part 5 the benefits of effective communication. 

Blog 18/31 in July for the Ultimate blog challenge.