Workplace collaboration at its worst

I occasionally hear the studies that say as a result of modern technologies, (smart phones, email, the web, etc) that we are less productive than ever. I couldn't disagree more. We use those SAME "distractions" to get more work down than ever before. As the leisure time has increased, so has the work output. Stop seeing the glass is half empty for crying out loud. 

Now let's consider this new and exponentially increasing work output for a moment. If you are serving the consumer marketing (B2C), you need to compete more than ever before. You need to try every marketing approach, consider the gargantuan databases of relevant marketing information available, open new stores, create new products all the while trying to grab more market share against formidable opponents. 

Think of the amount of work in the form of projects that your workplace team needs to juggle on a routine basis. 

The amount of work has grossly exceeded that which a hallway courier can help facilitate any longer. 

Enter the Project Managers. They go by various titles; coordinators, traffickers etc. However the ultimate end result is he/she becomes a project manager. 

Now managing a project is not about what to do with all of the information once it is collected, but the collection process itself. Then it involves organizing it, deciphering it, assigning the individual work activities out to the correct people, building the team, support their needs, pulling in other resources when needed, watching the costs, watching the schedule and taking the heat for anything that might implode along the way. Yes, this sounds like a project manager to me. 

Effective project management in marketing must have a proactive presence. Stop the problems from occurring at the start as opposed to trying to clean them up during mid sprint. It is like changing the brakes on the moving car. 

Here are some simple rules to follow when taking on a new assignment and it is a sure way to support your friends in campaign planning so they can focus on his/her best talents, that being selling the products and driving the business. 

1) BE THE LIGHTENING ROD

Consider yourself the unilateral isolationist that will get involved and be the buffer with any conflicts you need to resolve between different departments. You’ve got better things to do.

2) USE LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR

For those filling out the work requests / creative briefs, keep is simple smarty-pants. Do not feel you have to speak in a uber-executive corporate language to convey a simple point. What do you need and by when. That is all we need. Don’t dump your brain onto a Word Doc and ask me to find my information among the piles of verbal gray matter. Tell me what I need to know.

3) DON’T SELL YOURSELF SHORT

What everyone does in his/her unique role really does require a great deal of knowledge and experience and what they do really is difficult. Don't assume everyone knows what you are talking about because since you do it, it must be elementary dribble. Give yourself some credit. Explain things clearly as if you were the teacher. And understand that despite how much information resides in your skull, unless you put it on paper and/or communicate it to me, I’m not going to know.

4) THE HUMAN MINIMUM IS ENCOURAGED

Give everyone permission to screw things up occasionally. If you aren’t making mistakes, you aren’t trying hard enough and you are being too risk averse. Projects will get missed. Messages will fail to connect. Nobody should ever point fingers or criticize unless he or she is content with looking hypocritically foolish. We don’t fly aircraft nor perform open heart surgery here. No mistake will kill anyone. Accept the fact that you will never be perfect but never stop aiming for perfection. And when you remove the anxiety from the fear of making mistakes, you will make fewer.

5) USE SPORTS ANALOGIES (Baseball in my case)

We play on the same team and must back each other up. Yes it is the Shortstop’s responsibility to stop a routine grounder left of second base but regardless; the centerfielder should back him up just in case it gets between his legs. And the left fielder backs up the center fielder in case the unthinkable happens. And if it still hits the wall, well, we all did our jobs together and we shared the mistake and guess what, nobody died.

6) INFORMATION MUST BE PUSHED, NOT PULLED

There is no such thing as psychics or clairvoyants. I can watch your documents for obvious mistakes like “what is the due date”. But realistically, if the info isn’t there, it doesn’t exist (yet). You can’t expect anyone to be able to cover your back to that degree. It is not anyone’s responsibility to extract information from other people. It is ultimately your responsibility to share information you have with those that need it. Or at LEAST the traffic person (hence my existence).  Things NOT to do. Never say “refer to email in September”. That is TOO vague. Same deal with “point to a regular triple mag page.” That is a MARKETING decision. Pick a page and tell us specifically. Also never say “refer to my email, refer to meeting discussion”. NO. If it isn’t there in the document, it may have well never have existed. And my all time favorite, the "placeblo", also known as "Please see below". If you have something to email me, say it. I do not accept forwarded emails that start with "Please See Below" with exception of extremely rate occasions. An example of an exception would be....

Message: Please See Below

Fowarded Message: The manager has given her approval.

Done. 

Do me a favor and highlights and delete all of that html crap that emails like to include in forded messages so I don't have to scroll through 17 previous conversations that may or may not have a shrewd of relevance to anything I am working on. 

7) TRAFFIC MANAGER VERSUS PROJECT MANAGER.

You have the option to use me as a traffic person or a project manager. Project managers will take the time to understand all of the details of a project falling just short of doing it him/herself. With 120-150 projects at any given time, please try to understand the gravity of that implication where you have a single person that has to carry that much constantly changing, incoming and outgoing information. It is essentially impossible without 3 or more people. If I am to be a TRAFFIC person then my job is to make sure the info is there and going to/from the right people/places. That is it.

8) COMPLEXITY

The level of detail and complexity of a project should be inversely proportional to the sum of all of the people, channels and pieces of information required to build it. Same goes for communication. The more people and info involved, the simpler is has to be in order for it to work. The formula that calculates the number of possible communication channels is [n(n-1)]÷2 where n = the number of people involved. 10 people yield 45 different pathways. Yikes!

9) TIME SHOULD BE INVESTED, NOT SPENT

If I find an opportunity to work an extra 5 minutes in order to save a colleague 30 minutes, that is a positive return on time investment and I will choose that option 10 times out of 10. In turn, “Teamwork” means happily agreeing to do that in order to help your colleague. Those 25 saved minutes, although hard to quantify downstream, will pay everyone back in the end. Also, this may mean spending an extra 5% of time on a project request in order to make sure the information is well sorted. Being organized in life does require a little extra front-loaded effort. There is a false conception that these types of processes should be as brief as humanly possible. Maximum speed is the antithesis of organization. It is also the epitome of “garbage in, garbage out”.

10) HUDDLES OVER MEETINGS

Meetings are best at the beginning of a project. After that, huddles should suffice. The team meets before kickoff but everything after that is a huddle.  Quick, small, to the point. You can get all of the players in a room, decide on what we can do, what we can’t and who will do which part and what he/she needs in order to succeed. Meetings, although effective, are rigid and must have a strict agenda and required participants.

11) FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, PROOF YOUR TYPING

This is not an unreasonable request but you’d think it was. Someone is going to read what you say. Therefore, you’d best read it yourself in order to confirm they are going to know what you are talking about. Don’t forget about autocorrect! It’s very easy for “faces” to become, well, you know.  Communication is a 3-step process; the sender, the medium and the receiver. All 3 must work properly or it breaks down.

12) WRITTEN WORD TRUMPS THE SPOKEN ONE

Although face-to-face communication is excellent, for something as important as an intended customer experience, must be documented in writing. Having meetings and discussions should be used to supplement the documented info and answer questions, NOT to replace it. If that mistake is made, each person will document what he/she THINKS the intended customer experience is. In which case, you’ll have as many versions of the campaign as you had people discussing it. The intended customer experience is the foundation for the campaign and the baseline for every aspect of performance. If it isn’t formally documented early, it’s like we’re just winging it.

13) CHANGE IS EASIEST WHEN MADE EARLY

Traffic should start as early as possible in campaign development. The drawback with being a part of creative is that by the time most of the info I need to “traffic” gets to me, it has already gone to the wrong person, gone nowhere or was entered incorrectly. I should be coordinating traffic, not constantly fixing it.

Books:

Complexity Crisis,

4 hour work week,

Factory Physics,

The Goal