The Situation
A Fortune 100 multinational industrial manufacturing innovator had a nagging problem: senior communications leads were drowning in the day-to-day logistical details of pulling together quarterly business reviews. Chasing down operational and performance-related highlights and “herding cats” from multiple business and unit leaders from across numerous manufacturing, distribution, technology, administrative, and retail divisions across the U.S. had turned into an almost-daily job that seemingly started the day after the previous review was put to bed. Further, this same issue was present enterprise-wide – across the Americas, in the EMEA, throughout Asian markets, and in Africa.
The Plan
Work with the communication lead for each geographic business unit to:
1. Establish a set agenda of topics, reports and metrics unique to each unit along with an introductory communication from the C-suite outlining the organizational challenge, importance of the information being collected & communicated, and the key role/contribution of all stakeholders involved.
2. Based on those agendas, create a series of templates for each topic, data set, performance metric, and other key content areas including an example of “what good looks like,” annotated instructions, and an editable template.
3. Develop a visual roadmap outlining key milestone dates, reporting relationships, functional dependencies, and review cascades unique to each quarter.
4. Utilize a central point and automated enterprise-wide communication/business tools to distribute templates and timelines and to collect completed files.
5. Work with administrative staff to combine, collate, and assemble iterative working files.
6. Collaborate with senior communications leads to refine content and clean up & format presentations for final leadership review.
The Results
Q1: Initial skepticism and pushback, but measured progress.
Q2: Learning and refinement with greater organizational participation.
Q3: Optimization with near complete conformity.
Q4: Universal acceptance, systematized processes embedded, organizational efficiencies realized, and superior communications achieved.
“Working with Infinitely Big has forever changed the process, communication and efficiency & effectiveness of this organization top-to-bottom. So many thank yous!”