Communication+Management

When I was in middle school, I played cornet in the band. I was still learning, so I was just OK at it. Then I got braces, and my playing regressed. Significantly. The director noticed I was struggling with my embouchure as my braces pressed against my gums every time I put my lips to the relatively small mouthpiece. He suggested I try a low-brass instrument with a larger mouthpiece and handed me a baritone horn.  Thus began a beautiful musical relationship. I thoroughly enjoyed playing the baritone and got pretty good at it during high school. My parents eventually bought me a silver euphonium (a close cousin of the baritone) from a friend and classmate who was a much better musician. That instrument has been in our family ever since. I went on to play in the marching band and symphonic band in college, and I played in a few summer community bands over the years. However, as time passed, those moments of picking up my horn to play a few measures became fewer and further between. E...

Successful internal communication requires more than a finely crafted message. That message also must be delivered by the right person, using the right platform, at the right time. And all those decisions should be handled consistently across your organization. At one of my recent employers, we discovered we had a problem with several of these steps. Some situations that required specific messaging came up frequently, but they were managed differently depending on the team leader involved. That’s understandable, because each of them had a different take on what would be best in the various situations. However, this lack of consistency and standardization with our messaging led to confusion, miscommunication, and misunderstandings, which hurt morale. When I moved into the internal communications role for that division, one of my initial tasks was to create a communications protocol to clean up this mess. The first step in this process is to make a list of the different types of messages...