Written by Lindsay Ridgley
I recently had the opportunity to attend the Advanced Learning Institute’s Strategic Internal Communications Conference in Boston, MA. The takeaways were as hot as the 40 degree weather (what’s that in Fahrenheit?) so here are my top three:
1. Flash focus groups are so fetch
We’ve held focus groups before, typically with outside stakeholders and for things like media campaigns. But Karen Brown Tyson with GlaxoSmithKline turned my world upside down when she talked about bringing them internal, and in place of surveys with low response rates. The idea itself is so simple that it’s brilliant. Set up a table in a high traffic area of your organization, armed with a couple of key questions, and connect with your team for more valuable feedback.
2. Just get out there
So often we’re consumed with crafting the perfect message that we miss our moment. Pinaki Kathiari’s idea to fail fast, fail cheap and succeed faster really serves as an opportunity to combat that perfectionist way of thinking. Get the message out there, make it better and then get it out there again.
3. Spell it out for leaders
We all know that buy-in from leaders is key, so how do we ensure that they communicate in line with our comms strategy? Claire Coveney and the team at ASPCA have developed an awesome way to ensure that never happens again with their Leaders of the Pack email. They tell leaders exactly what they need to do, what to share with their teams and highlight professional development opportunities to achieve those goals. That’s an idea we can all scoop up.