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Did the mes­sage real­ly reach everyone?

I rec­og­nize that. Do you? I mean, of course, I under­stand that not every­one con­cerned was nec­es­sar­i­ly there, or that those who were there even heard what we talked about (since it was just a cof­fee break). But when every­thing moves fast and there’s so much infor­ma­tion fly­ing around in the air, in emails, and in chat, it’s easy — at least for me — to uncon­scious­ly think, ​“I already said that.”

Extra dif­fi­cult nowadays

Even if we appre­ci­ate all our col­leagues, it’s easy to for­get those who weren’t present at the moment. At the same time, suc­cess­ful col­lab­o­ra­tion requires that every­one who needs to know some­thing gets the same infor­ma­tion. That’s an extra chal­lenge now, when many of us work less at the office and more from home than ever before.

The con­trol ques­tion clarifies

The lec­ture par­tic­i­pant I met sug­gest­ed that one can get into the habit of ask­ing, ​“Who else should know this?” in such sit­u­a­tions and, once that’s clear, share it with that per­son or those peo­ple in an appro­pri­ate way.

I think that’s a good sug­ges­tion. So, that becomes my encour­age­ment to you (and me).

Do this

1. Next time you and your col­leagues or employ­ees ​“talk work” and absolute­ly every­one is not present, ask your­self, ​“Who else should know this?”
   
   It might be those in the depart­ment who are work­ing from home today, the col­leagues who car­pool in anoth­er car to the con­fer­ence, or those work­ing at a small­er office in anoth­er city than you at head­quar­ters.
    
2. If you real­ize some peo­ple should be informed of what you came up with (or even decid­ed!), please pass it on in a way that no one can miss.

• Do you have a Teams chat chan­nel where you share this kind of information?
• Do you have an upcom­ing meet­ing where every­one will be present, so you can add a point about what was dis­cussed to the agenda?
• Will you soon meet the absent group in anoth­er con­text, so you can cre­ate a to-do task like ​“Tell the oth­ers about the smart thing we came up with dur­ing cof­fee” and set the due date to the day you’ll meet?
• Or do you have an entire­ly dif­fer­ent forum for this?

Few­er dis­as­trous assumptions

If you pause briefly after dis­cussing some­thing valu­able and ask your­self who else should know, mis­un­der­stand­ings in the team will be few­er. Employ­ees will share a more con­sis­tent under­stand­ing of what applies, and the assump­tions made at work will be more accu­rate. There will be few­er crises to resolve and more time for essentials.

How do you do it?

How do you ensure that all your employ­ees receive the same infor­ma­tion at approx­i­mate­ly the same time? Please write to me and let me know. As always, I’m all ears and curi­ous about what tricks you have that I, too, could ben­e­fit from.

(Speak­ing of not all being in the place, here are six tips on how to cre­ate good hybrid meet­ings!)