One Workflow to Solve Your Team's Communication Challenges
Aug 14, 2024If you've ever watched Abbott and Costello's "Who's on First" routine, you'll understand how funny communication challenges can be.
As much as that skit is classically humorous, communication challenges are a reality for our teams, making communication one of the most challenging leadership skills at scale.
- How do you ensure your teams are aligned?
- How do you ensure everyone is striving after the same mission?
- What can you do to have absolute certainty that the decisions you make are received at every level of your organization?
This is what I'll tackle in today's newsletter: building strategic communication workflows.
The Telephone Game Doesn't Work
In an ideal situation, when your team makes a decision, every person will understand exactly what the decision is and will communicate that decision flawlessly with their teams.
But we know this is far from reality.
Any kid who's played the "telephone game" understands how hard it is to relay a single, simple sentence to multiple people.
The message always breaks down.
A habit I come back to again and again is having my team communicate back to me the decision that is being made.
A good portion of the time, it's slightly off-course, so it gives me an opportunity to clarify.
But even if we are diligent in having our teams communicate back to us what decision was made, it will still likely fall apart at the next level, giving the all-too-common and painful Abbott and Costello "Who's on First" outcome.
Applying Strategy to Communication
As much as communication is a beast of an issue for all teams to tackle, there are simple tools you can use to take a strategic approach to helping team communication thrive.
The one I want to share today was taught to me by a former IBM executive who was kind enough to mentor me at my first company.
She gave me the gift of a Workflow System.
Simply put, it's a high-level view of your company's communication workflow from the top down.
It helps you think through how teams are receiving and transmitting the most critical information up and down the chain of command.
It answers the question, "How does Annual/Quarterly Strategic Planning move from one level of the company to the next?" by ensuring that not just your team is driving towards the plan but that each of your teams is doing the same.
Let's take a look at an example:
This example is actually my base workflow system for any company I work with.
Is it the only way? No.
Can meetings be added, removed, or revised? Absolutely.
The point is not to say you must do "this meeting" or "that meeting" but to showcase the strategic thought you should put into creating a workflow system that works for your unique company.
Top-to-Bottom Communication Flow
As you consider thinking strategically about creating your own workflow system, here are a few tips to ensure it's effective:
- Start with Vision Setting and Move to Weekly Tactical → answer the question, "How do I ensure every team member is receiving vision and direction?"
- Set, Train, and Implement ONE Workflow → it's not enough to pass along information and hope your team and their teams pass the torch. Figure out what meetings and meeting structures need to look like in order to effectively manage the system. E.g., anyone managing an employee in my company must follow a three-meeting workflow:
- Quarterly Half-Day Strategic Planning: Taking leadership OKRs and creating 90d Goals.
- Quarterly 1:1 Check-in: Team coaching for long-term success, leading, managing, and holding team members accountable to the culture, goals, and their roles.
- Weekly Team Huddle: Problem-solving, team accountability, and goal/metric tracking.
- Iterate and Tweak as Necessary → Every company is unique. What works well for some doesn't work for others. As you implement your workflow system, evaluate where the gaps are and tweak as necessary.
Within just a few months of implementing your workflow system, you'll begin to see the pace within your company pick up, communication channels open, and more of the right things getting done.
Systems = Scalability