Remember this post? There’s more to the formula. Review – Everyone in my shop knows everything, all the time – this is called shared understanding. Understanding enables action. Action gets the mission done.
In fact, not everyone knows everything, all the time but we strive to.
How do we do it? I travel a lot, so it isn’t my great communication skills and fun personality.
Here is how we seek to achieve shared understanding:
Sync – We have a daily sync, every morning. The purpose is four fold. Understand the calendar, identify opportunities to collaborate, identify things that are important enough that everyone needs to know and tell me where you need help (I build bridges and knock down walls for my people).
Calendar – the shared calendar is a policy document. The calendar is how we delineate the expenditure of our most limited resource – Time. You’ll be surprised at the opportunities for collaboration a shared calendar brings.
Slack – Start a Slack with your team today. Mostly we share the news, we provide internal commentary on the news. We pass updates, work on changes and work together for common purpose on Slack. I travel, my crew works out of two offices. We always know what’s going on, all the time.
OneNote – If you’re not rocking OneNote in your shop, its time to start. The days of a tired, long, outdated SOP are over (if you even remember those days). OneNote allows you to store and sync all of your information in one, easy to search place. If someone has a question, the answer should be on OneNote. If it’s not, put it there as soon as you get an answer. You’ll never have to ask that question again.
One Email Address – Never, ever send an email without copying your whole team. Get your organization to make one distribution list for your shop and only use that, ever. Be disciplined. The only thing I accept single addressed emails on are contract and personnel issues; all else we always copy the distribution list. Email sucks.
Talk – We don’t make time to do lame ass social things but we do make time for whiteboard meetings and physical fitness events. Your team must have an open communication and collaborative environment. Only you can figure out how to make that happen.
The power of a team where everyone knows everything is immense.
Now go and do likewise.
Photo by Master Sgt. Mark Olsen
