This summer season, my colleague, Mel, and I had the pleasure of spending time in Miami with communications leaders from throughout the nation. As soon as once more, we had been struck by how these leaders have been thrust into the highlight up to now few years resulting from causes such because the COVID pandemic, social justice points and the warfare in Ukraine, to call a couple of.
One in every of our key takeaways was that there are actually ample alternatives for communications executives to be out entrance with a deeper sphere of affect. For some, these prospects are thrilling and for others, who’re extra snug working behind the scenes to assist others shine, they are often daunting. Both manner, your seat on the desk is well-deserved and there are methods to embrace larger visibility and affect whereas nonetheless being genuine to your management fashion.
Serving to others enable you
Leaning right into a management position comes with unexpected alternatives and challenges, together with bandwidth, price range and staffing. Doing “extra with much less” has develop into the mantra of company America. Subsequently, we encourage you to look over the fence and benefit from cross-functional collaboration with a view to get essentially the most out of the group’s sources whereas creating area so that you can develop.
Essentially the most pure companions for communications departments are sometimes advertising (from an exterior communications perspective) and human sources (from an inner one). Forging deeper partnerships with these teams might be useful in connecting the messaging round company goal and mission with the sensible execution of go-to-market methods. The added perspective and insights from these fellow stakeholders provides extra texture to the ensuing messaging, content material, and model experiences, and ship richer emotional connections and deeper understanding to a broader vary of audiences. It takes a extra coordinated effort on all components, nevertheless it’s value it to make the magic occur.
To summarize, cross-functional collaboration helps to:
- Create a way of shared goal, duty, and empathy
- Facilitate innovation and knowledge-sharing
- Enhance staff productiveness and efficiency
- Share the highlight so that everybody’s contributions are acknowledged
So how do you make this occur? Assembly usually along with your departmental friends have to be a precedence. By establishing a gathering cadence and committing collectively to a plan of motion, the group’s objectives might be met and all people wins.
Different methods to operationalize collaboration embody breaking down silos with empathy-building workout routines. What does it imply to stroll a day within the footwear of selling or HR? Maintain “no dangerous concepts” brainstorming conferences each quarter to foster new concepts that drive collaboration and reinforce a shared sense of goal. Align your goals and key outcomes (OKRs) with management and ensure each staff member is aware of what they’re. Maintain them posted in your achievements and measurable progress — this may be accomplished in no matter manner you select that is smart in your organizational tradition. It helps to do that frequently with a view to hold the traces of communication open and ensure everyone seems to be on the identical web page always.
One instance from our consumer, a fast-paced tech firm within the Midwest, that’s doing it effectively:
They’ve very aggressive initiatives set by the CEO and issues have a tendency to vary course at lightning velocity. The deliverables are formidable and thrilling and generally even a bit overwhelming.
There’s a lot to be accomplished by this group of exceptionally gifted communicators, creatives and entrepreneurs. It’s only via open communication and efficient collaboration that they can meet the calls for placed on them each day. We meet with them usually to guarantee that their management is aligned and there may be shared consciousness of the imaginative and prescient. We’ve got created templates for dialog design with different departments. This requires each effort and time, however they know if they aren’t aligned, there may be potential for issues to get off kilter fairly shortly.
They perceive that it’s not solely necessary to collaborate with one another but additionally to grasp the significance of usually bringing in gross sales, HR and IT to assist them. In reality, the final time we had been with them at their HQ, we had the prospect to satisfy the pinnacle of gross sales when she got here into certainly one of our management periods. She sat with us and the entire division for the afternoon with a view to perceive the precise initiatives and objectives that they’d happening on the time.
This consumer realizes the worth in having different departments to assist elevate you up and help you as friends and colleagues. They know that it is just collectively that they will obtain larger objectives and climb the mountain.
It’s not at all times simple to remain in alignment with all the shifting items and completely different personalities, however they’re dedicated to their objectives — and to one another. They’re consistently striving to make one another higher and to succeed in larger than they ever imagined was doable. The deep care that they’ve for each other and for the corporate mission is palpable if you stroll via the halls of their workplaces.
Collectively, you’ll be able to obtain extra and go farther than you ever thought doable. Whenever you see the outcomes of genuine collaboration accomplished proper, you’ll notice, it’s well worth the effort and the time!
Mary Olson-Menzel is the founder and CEO of MVP Government Improvement and co-founding father of Spark Perception Teaching.
