Pitfall #3: Poor Communication
By Heather Klindworth, Partner
This is the final part of our series on the pitfalls of lack of systems and structure in campaigns, nonprofits, and businesses. You can find the first part here!
Last week, we started a series on the pitfalls of poor project management on campaigns. We identified pitfall number one as a lack of clear roles and responsibilities and number two as reactive planning and lack of systems. Wrapping up our pitfalls, today we’ll talk about the third: poor communication systems.
We’ve all been there. You remember someone sent you something really important that you need to attend to but can’t remember where it lives digitally– perhaps it was in a spreadsheet comment, a Slack thread, email, a text, or from a document shared with you in Google. You spend precious time that you could be working on your task just trying to remember where it lives or what you needed to do. Missing deadlines or being rushed due to information lost in email chains or chat threads underscores the importance of clear communication systems.
At the start of a campaign or program, it is important to designate the channels information flows through, as well as communication norms. These communication norms will inform many of your administrative processes, including approval processes, staff management, task delegation, and external communication. Whether you use a tool like Slack or Asana, solely use email, or utilize a combination of all of the above, it’s important to designate what types of information come through which medium.
Let’s look at an example! A municipal candidate, Juan, has decided texts are to be used solely for alerts and time-pertinent requests and everything else will be done over email. Over the course of the campaign, Juan’s team has started to share things solely via text message. Juan has two options. The first option is to reinforce the initial communication norms, reminding his team to primarily use email and save texts for time-sensitive needs. The second option is to adjust the communication norms. If Juan has a team of all young people who constantly text, it may make sense to shift the communication norms to meet his team’s needs. If Juan has a hard time keeping up on texts, he may reinforce the use of email.
Other examples of communication norms include boundaries around timing. Maybe you are an early riser who doesn’t want to receive communication after 9pm. If you’re a productive night owl, you may let your team know that you may be sending emails late at night, but they are under no obligation to respond until the morning.
Finally, a key part of having clear communication systems is to decide what information individuals do or do not need to receive. For example, an organizational Slack doesn’t need to include every team member in every channel. Not every team member needs to be on every email thread. Make sure that channels of information are tailored to those who need to be on them, including the candidate. Knowing just to know doesn’t always serve you, and your time can be better spent focused on what candidates do best: talking to voters and raising money.
