It’s onerous to get people on the same page anymore. Too many tools. Tool many options. Not enough time.
It’s true when they say the bigger the ship, the harder it is to turn the ship around. There are good captains and there are even better captains. The best captain meets as many objectives in one turn, keeps everyone safe on board with the fewest mistakes, and does so in the least amount of time.
When the crew is on board, idealistically everyone places nice. Once dismissed to their assignment, well… that’s another story.
Everyone has access to the same set of tools. How each person and organization uses those tools will determine how successful they will be and that REQUIRES ALIGNMENT. That requires alignment on the conceptual level, emotional level, and how it will directly impact each person.
Below you will see an alignment breakdown between the marketing, IT, and talent development team. When you add sales, customer service, and operations, it quickly becomes even more complicated.
If the team is truly aligned you won’t hear excuses like:
- I’ve been waiting for the passwords from IT for over a month.
- Our messaging is stale.
- We don’t have access to the Facebook page.
- That’s in the marketing budget, not in our budget.
- We need celebrities, sought-after experts, and entertainers.
- We might be saving that room for something else.
- Finance doesn’t meet until next month which means we probably won’t have it in the budget until the year after next.
If the team is truly aligned, anyone at any time should be able to reference their business process, not one another. There isn’t fingerpointing. There is solution pointing. Your virtual camera business process is an outline of how decisions are made, situations are handled, and results are achieved. Your team needs to create this business process together and evolve it over time if you want a higher-performing team.
Since they are so many more options now to show up inside of a video camera feed, print this post out or review it on your next virtual meeting with your team and ask these questions:
How do we agree upon which tools we will use on a daily, weekly, and single-use basis?
What are the business processes that need to be established in order to maximize workflow effectiveness and greater productivity?
What skills do we need to acquire in order to maximize our executive presence during meetings, recorded video, and virtual events?
How do we handle situations where the team might disagree upon tool selection, skill development, and creative content development?
Which performance metrics does the team across multiple departments (ex. marketing, IT, talent development) use to consistently evaluate its effectiveness?
Can we identify some of the biggest risks associated with each tool, business process, and how team members will use each tool to determine some preventative measures that will mitigate risk?
Can we brainstorm a few #screentotscreen tactics to deploy that will help us reach the most amount of our organization’s objectives with the fewest amount of resources?
How can we increase our digital footprint by communicating our core values across the right customer channels where we can maximize customer engagement?
Pull up this post once a year and discuss with your team. The questions will stay the same. Answers will be different because tools change, business processes evolve, and each person on board matures with a higher confidence using the tools your team has mutually agreed upon moving forward.
