Developing simple talking points
Our team members represented discrete data silos that needed to communicate back to their respective managers.
We had a SharePoint site to provide project status updates, but face-to-face communication still trumped any other mode of communication. Members had to be able to succinctly and unambiguously report back about:
- What the team was (and was not) developing.
- What resources the project required, and for how long.
- How new processes directly benefited their silo.
Faced with competition for limited resources, we needed managers to understand the value of new processes in terms of faster, cheaper, and smarter data. So I developed a fact sheet. Proactively handling our messaging helped team members recognize and speak to misinformation succinctly, creating confidence with their managers.
But for all our efforts, this was marginally successful. This shows how misinformation and beliefs become pervasive and entrenched.
Next page: Just because it looks easy…
