Let’s Talk About It

So many of our problems could be solved if we just communicated better. The problem is that when you have multiple teammates, who live and work in multiple parts of town, trying to communicate about multiple things, the slightest communication breakdown can make it very difficult to get tasks accomplished.

The case has held true with our most recent Causeway Challenge teams. Let’s think about it. Communicating within their teams is hard enough, but when you throw in the fact that they also have to communicate with their consultant, the Causeway staff, and any community partners, there is a lot of room for error in the communication department. Especially considering the fact that they all have full-time jobs and personal lives outside of their projects. I’m exhausted just talking about how much they have to communicate.

The good news is that while effective communication can be difficult, it’s not impossible. There are some tools and resources out there that are designed to help streamline the ways we communicate as teams and organizations. There also are some very practical ways to make sure your team stays on track and on the same page. Here’s what has worked well for us:

Slack
This has been an awesome tool; especially for our largest group. Slack puts me in the mindset of a group chat. It’s great because you can see everyone’s comments, decide which “channel” your comments need to go in, upload documents, and it serves as a paper trail. You can also download the Slack app which allows you to stay in-the-know from your phone. We have even had teams use Slack to cast their vote on time-sensitive matters. Slack is still a somewhat new platform to some, so be prepared for some initial push-back. Some may want to just go with traditional email, but my opinion is that they should give Slack a shot.

15Five.com
15Five has served as a great reporting and feedback tool. It also sometimes acts as an outlet for team members to vent about what they see is working or not working in their role or with the team. Team members take 15 minutes a week to answer five questions regarding their wins for the week, challenges, morale, and goals for the upcoming week. We have often found out information about our teams that we may not normally have found out until it was too late, but because of 15Five we were able to be proactive.

Standing weekly meetings
There’s nothing groundbreaking about this point. Standing weekly meetings just flat-out work. It helps with consistency. We found that almost immediately after work hours is the best time to meet. It’s harder to get folks back together to meet once they have already gotten home and into their routines. Prepare a draft of agenda items ahead of time (this can be done in Slack), and from there have someone be the time keeper and someone be the facilitator. Doing so assures that the meetings are productive and stay on track.

Time and time again, we have seen that communication practices directly effect every team’s progress, for better or for worse. With the Causeway Challenge teams, my hope is that all of them take the lessons that they have learned around effective communication, and apply those lessons as they continue to move forward with their projects even post-Causeway.