It's Friday afternoon and an email hits your inbox. It's from the senior leader of your group which means you have to at least skim it. The leader is asking for their "inner circle's" ideas on how to communicate with leaders of other lines of business on a monthly basis.
You know how this works...if you have a reasonable idea the leader is going to ask you to develop it and roll out the new communication on a short timeframe. Armed with this knowledge you ignore the email.
Several hours later another email appears from the senior leader addressed only to you. The leader butters you up with some praise and asks for your ideas. You take 3 minutes and toss something back across the fence that seems doable.
Guess what? The senior leader responds in about two minutes, assigns you the task, and asks that I have it ready to roll out by Tuesday. Remember it is Friday afternoon.
The Question
Why do leaders do stuff like this?
- They know you have great ideas and can execute on them. They show confidence and trust in you by asking for your opinion. They feel that you can be trusted to handle time sensitive projects.
- They are "too busy", and when they see a decent idea they flip it back to the person so they can get it done. This isn't bad once in awhile as we all have great ideas. However, the leader will get a reputation for doing this an pretty soon, and very few people are going to want to be on their team.
The Rest of The Story
Rather then stew about this, I opened up a computer program and hammered out a nice visual newsletter that did not require opening (i.e. PDF) and that could be read in less than five minutes. You see I knew the secret with most communication today is to make it short and punchy. If you get people interested they will read your missive every time.
You Can't Make This Up!
So the senior leaders provides super positive feedback and tells me what great work this is. He then flips the newsletter idea to someone else with a few comments.
- Let's make this several pages
- Let's make this a PDF
- Let's include a calendar of future activities
- Let's include a whole page of contact information for the 15-20 people on the team
The length alone guarantees that this will not be read.
The Lesson
If you are a senior leader and see this need, add this for discussion at your next strategy meeting. The group can then hash out if this need is real, and what the best format is to reach out and communicate to other lines of business. Then a group of folks can be assigned to help with the final format. This involves the entire team, brings the team closer together as they work on a team need, and can be a success that everyone can celebrate.
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