Getting on the Same Page

Among senior leadership teams, there is no shortage of challenges and obstacles. The manner in which team members communicate and keep enterprise-wide projects on track is at the top of the list.

Often, major initiatives require the cooperation of several departments and team member specialists. Understanding and explaining the complexity of these activities to those whose participation is needed can be difficult. The need for these members to contribute is sometimes in conflict with the requirements of their “real job”; that is, the work assigned to them by the head of their department. How then to plan, organize, and execute these projects in an efficient, effective way?

As with most major corporate initiatives, the full cooperation and enthusiastic commitment of the senior leadership is a must. Each must also acknowledge that managers and team members within their individual departments will be required to commit their time and energy accordingly: not in place of their assigned duties, but in addition to them. This requires fully developed management and supervisory skills as well as a system for keeping communication and projects on track in real time.

Here’s one way not to accomplish this: email!  When asked how senior team members communicate within their departments and organization-wide, the common answer is through email. We can do better.

Consider the amount of email traffic that flows through employees’ systems on a daily basis, and it isn’t difficult to see how messages can be buried by this avalanche of communications. Even employing the most advanced email sorting tools, the problem persists. Compounding this communication challenge is the fact that team members (including members of the senior leadership team) often use different project management systems and tools (Smart Sheets, Basecamp, et al). Here’s an important first step.

Beginning with the senior leadership team, select one project management system which will be fully integrated and utilized across the entire enterprise. Involve team members in the selection process (understand that some will lobby for their preferred system). Once chosen, adoption across the organization becomes mandatory, not optional. Provide time and assistance in training team members to facilitate adoption. Often these systems provide easy to use tutorials. LinkedIn learning may be a resource. Or simply identify one or more “champions” among team members who have been active users of the chosen system and enable them to provide training.