Rubbish! Shouted this large, aggressive man in this red shirt. The team don’t need to be told anything. When we’ve sorted every detail out and have the ads ready to operate, then we’ll tell them. They don’t need to know it is only going to stop them working he went to loudly proclaim. It’s tough to ignore the wishes of your customer when he has browbeaten his management team, in addition to every adviser and is currently paying you. However my experience, over and over again, is this: If you do not tell them what is happening, they will make it up anyway.
Workers not present in planning offsite meetings aren’t dumb, they are not present. They know you’re away, while you’re not minding the extension planning your communication is a prerequisite to committed and effective implementation of any direction so they’ll gossip and rumour monger for their heart’s discontent. It also goes a considerable way towards problem minimization. To be able to minimize the internal and external risks of rumours and gossip you must have it firmly set in your mind a communication should arrive with all speed, consistency and completeness. These guidelines found useful and have been tested by experience.
Design and Agree:
The communication plan should be made and agreed by all included in the preparation process, not an adjunct action assigned to a junior supervisor who, in all likelihood, wasn’t even at the preparation meeting.
Tell Everybody ASAP:
Feedback to all those affected ought to take place at the earliest possible opportunity, ideally first thing next morning, before this rumour mill had too long to gear up. A useful plan is to have preparation meetings on weekends, with the team briefing occurring first thing Monday Morning.
One Meeting for Bind Them All:
Aim for one single briefing or feedback session, as opposed to multiple sessions where watering down or distortion of this original message might occur.
Fortunately, technology largely allows such a single session for occur, even on multiple time zones. In such an instance, scripting of this communication would prove a valuable tool for consistency, especially where this text of this session will appear on a company intranet.
Follow Up and Repurpose
A follow-up message to all from the Chief Executive Officer, emphasizing the key points, is quite useful. It too can be repurposed for appear on this company intranet, or as a briefing for investors and this marketplace. All this and more might seem like overkill, a tremendous amount of effort for quite little gain.