"Hey guys, you need to see this!"

When was the last time you heard that sentence, or a variant of it, during the rounds of your operation?

It's an important little sentence, because it conveys importance, urgency, and personal line-of-sight, as it sets up an ad hoc communication platform for a skilled manager to communicate to her/his staff.

Why is this important?

1. Through increased communication, the manager will reap the rewards of increased discretionery effort/engagement
2. When staff become accustomed to these ad hoc forums, virtually anything can be communicated, from corporate/organization directives, to unit performance improvement requirements
3. These ad hoc sessions, by nature short (5-10 minute standup meetings), once used to communicate non-operational/transactional information are a natural opener to improved communication to the unit manager, providing the manager with a better sense of the pulse of the operation, and the needs of her/his staff

To integrate this simple transition into your daily routine, or into the routines of the managers reporting to you, I suggest adding it to your PDA schedule now, scheduling the activity for 30 business days, and sending the invitation to each of your direct reports (to get it on their schedules).

...tell me your impressions in 30 days!

'Communication' for really, really busy managers.

Every manager knows that communication is central to her/his job. We're taught it in B-school, and it was drilled into us way-back when we were still wet behind the ears.

What they didn't tell us was what the impact of good communication would be.

Did you know though, that a management team that is (uniformly) a group of great communicators links to a 29.5% market value premium of their company? Or, that companies with better organizational communicationl earned shareholder value 50% better than industry peers.

Watson Wyatt, in an '06 report, goes so far to say that communication is a central key to employee engagement, itself a leading indicator of market value.

Yet rotten communication persists.

We see it when branch offices are 'out of the loop' for months on corporate initiatives, or one or more departments are apparently marching to their own drummer when it comes to service, safety, or other items of strategic importance.

It's so common, that as consumers, we've become agile enough (or is it just patient enough?) to navigate around many company's service policies just to complete basic transactions (such as servicing our cars).

As managers, we can improve the communication in our organization, by:

• Recognizing the critical nature of communication to the bottom line, and personally committing to improving our skills, discipline, and focus in this area
• Position company communications to our employees through the filters of what they're interested in hearing:

- provide a clear line of sight to your company's strategy, so that your employees know how their work affects the 'big picture' and how the big picture affects their work

- provide knowledge so that your employees can affect their performance within this context

- provide recognition, guidance, and accountability, so that your employees know that their effort matters

Comments?