Traci Scherck: Have you ever felt like that communication that you have lands on deaf ears or you’re talking to a curtain right.

Traci Scherck: So what’s really important is when we communicate in a way that actually gets us the results that we intend to get.

Traci Scherck: And what we have found throughout our years of serving organizations and working with organizational leaders.

Traci Scherck: Is that there is a very specific way to communicate effectively to actually drive those key results.

Traci Scherck: So, welcome to tell an optimization i’m Tracy Scherck and today we’re going to be digging into what that communication looks like.

Traci Scherck: And here’s something really interesting, so there was a report that was just run by the predictive index which interviewed 500 companies.

Traci Scherck: called the state of talent optimization or important will have that report in the show notes if you’re interested in it.

Traci Scherck: But what it specifically you know some of the key things that came out of that is that only 23% of these executives said that they aligned their talents.

Traci Scherck: With their business strategy yet 93% of those individuals that did this had prevented financial loss in the past year.

Traci Scherck: So that’s really interesting right, but the other side of that is that we found that less than 80% of CEOs believe that their employees ability to communicate the business strategy to others, essentially.

Traci Scherck: executing your organizational strategy can feel like a game of telephone, so you know if middle managers are not clear on the direction.

Traci Scherck: Up to the top and that that confusion is going to amplify as you go down through the layers of the organization.

Traci Scherck: So senior leaders need a very clear talent strategy that puts complex business needs into clear people terms, so that all staff understand what the strategy is.

Traci Scherck: And that my friends is communicating with clarity in order to ensure that you’re getting those key results right.

Traci Scherck: So how the heck do you do that inside of an organization and we’re going to go through a couple of key ways to do that.

Traci Scherck: But here’s the thing with business strategy that I want to talk about for a second before we get into communicating it.

Traci Scherck: And that’s really understanding what is a business strategy, because what we find so often is that what a strategy is is misunderstood to either be a mission which is really what will be achieved on.

Traci Scherck: The values is a network of whom that value will be created and captured but a strategy is how resources should be allocated to accomplish the mission in the context of.

Traci Scherck: The organization so that’s the key right so strategy is really all about how those resources are allocated in order to get those end results well guess what.

Traci Scherck: So much of that is being done through people inside of the organization, so when we can align our people directly to that strategy and ensure that we have the right people in place to execute that strategy.

Traci Scherck: With clear communication on what that is guess what this becomes easy all of the sudden the blurriness goes away and we start to see it in 3D right in front of us.

Traci Scherck: So let’s take a closer look specifically into what that is and so much of it has to do with alignment have we aligned.

Traci Scherck: For ourselves the mission and the goals which was the what to how we’re going to accomplish this, which is our strategy to why we’re going to do it to who’s going to do the work right.

Traci Scherck: um so that’s what our job is, as you know, executives and HR professionals is to clarify these things inside the Organization for our staff and to ensure that they really know where they’re going.

Traci Scherck: So a couple of different you know things that we definitely want to focus on today.

Traci Scherck: is how we communicate that so when we’re communicating and this is probably not going to be anything new to many of you is using really smart goals and we like to call them smart goals.

Traci Scherck: So what specifically are we focusing on in keeping that constrained focus to three things because guess what our brains are not storage containers, unfortunately.

Traci Scherck: If we are spending all of our time going around thinking about what it is we have to do or not spending the time getting the things done, that we need to get done.

Traci Scherck: So when we can constrain our focus to very specifically those three things we have to do we’re going to get those three things done.

Traci Scherck: And then we need to be able to measure it so what is the measure of that.

Traci Scherck: And here’s a key distinction and if you’ve listened to our podcast you’ve heard me talk about this several times is the distinction between an output and an outcome, so an output might be that we are going to have a meeting with our.

Traci Scherck: committee about.

Traci Scherck: How we’re going to allocate our resources and develop specific products right so we’re going to have a meeting about how we’re going to do this.

Traci Scherck: that’s an out put but there’s no outcome, so what is the outcome of that meeting, if we don’t define.

Traci Scherck: What those outcomes are and how we measure it we’re not going to get things done efficiently and we’re also not communicating effectively what the measure is.

Traci Scherck: So instead of saying hey we’re having a meeting you know with our our development team, we can state.

Traci Scherck: That in our development team meeting, we will accomplish these three strategies or we’re going to make a decision on these three strategies that we will put into place in the next xyz timeframe.

Traci Scherck: So it’s really different when we think about that so that’s the measure of what it is and the.

Traci Scherck: The.

Traci Scherck: Action is, what are the specific actions that we are going to take to do that, and so are we going to make five phone calls are we going to.

Traci Scherck: You know, enter the information into the system in creates the email flows of what that communication will look like, are we going to.

Traci Scherck: create the workflow process that makes that thing happen, and you know determine who are resourcing needs to be specifically for that.

Traci Scherck: And then um is this realistic, and this is something that’s so incredibly important for our leaders to take a look at.

Traci Scherck: Is Is this a realistic goal, meaning can be done on the timeline that we have with the resources that we have.

Traci Scherck: Because if we’re not clear on what it is we’re trying to accomplish and or not really paying attention to how long something can take.

Traci Scherck: We can put our whole team in flux and create so much stress for them that we end up with high turnover and we may get the thing done in six months, when actually it should take you know, a year and a half.

Traci Scherck: But it came at a huge cost the organization so want to make sure that those things are realistic and that their time base so hey when does this thing need to be done by.

Traci Scherck: The other thing to look at is what is the Why is this important, so if we think back to that mission and the conversation that we were just having.

Traci Scherck: Why are we doing it, and does it align with who we are, as an organization so again it’s specific it’s measurable it’s actionable.

Traci Scherck: it’s realistic it’s time based and there’s a specific why to it.

Traci Scherck: And so let’s talk a little bit about what this looks like from a manager perspective and we use something in our organization that we call easy weeks.

Traci Scherck: And really what easy weeks is it is how we’re communicating out the tasks.

Traci Scherck: For individuals in our organization, quite honestly, it’s how we’re communicating to ourselves and to each other about what specifically, it is that we’re doing so, for example.

Traci Scherck: We are going to lay out everything that we need to do for the week ahead of time.

Traci Scherck: And then we’re going to go ahead and build that into our calendar, so I know that you know, I have three specific goals that need to be accomplished on Monday, one of them may be.

Traci Scherck: To finish, a report for a client one of those goals for Monday, maybe to record a podcast.

Traci Scherck: And one of those goals for Monday may be to lead a webinar inside of our talent optimization foundation program So those are my three tasks that I need to do i’m going to block in my calendar.

Traci Scherck: The time that I believe it will take because i’m going to tell myself how long it’s going to take to do that thing.

Traci Scherck: So instead of saying you know research for report i’m going to say complete report and send to xyz client, I mean a block those two hours off.

Traci Scherck: And guess what in my mind now I can cross it off my list because it’s already done in it is written as a completion.

Traci Scherck: Very specific I can measure it did I send the report I have the actions there in in the body of my calendar invite.

Traci Scherck: it’s realistic and I have the two hours, I say i’m going to do it, and why am I doing it because our mission is that we believe every individual, has a right choice to be fulfilled in the work that they do so that report.

Traci Scherck: Aligns, specifically with that mission so that’s just an example of how we can really use.

Traci Scherck: Our communication to drive very specific business results inside of our organization and that’s just through calendaring right.

Traci Scherck: So, if we take it, you know a little bit into a bigger scenario we can look at this for what are the three goals for the year now let’s break it down into quarterly.

Traci Scherck: Now let’s break it down into monthly and everything should aligned to match that and, of course, we’re going to do that for teams and specifically.

Traci Scherck: For the individuals that’s also how we can start to have really great performance conversations in the moment to support individuals in reaching and achieving their key goals so with that.

Traci Scherck: As we close all of our podcasts what is one key takeaway for HR professionals, and that is, you know really know what are the business objectives of your Executive leadership team.

Traci Scherck: If you know what those business objectives of your Executive leadership team, are you can communicate them effectively.

Traci Scherck: To the management team and to staff through whatever communication platform you use we love partnering with paylocity and using events and paylocity to push out.

Traci Scherck: You know, key communication and actually doing it via video.

Traci Scherck: So that’s one thing that you can do and what is the key takeaway for the executives, and that is, you know where you’re going align your business strategy with your people strategy to get your business results.

Traci Scherck: and have clarity about that, because what that’s going to do is it’s going to allow individuals inside your organization to get better results.

Traci Scherck: So with that please join us in our talent optimization foundation program which is every Monday at one o’clock.

Traci Scherck: Where we specifically dig into these key strategies we go into the step by step, of how to do it.

Traci Scherck: And then we have open office hours, where you can ask us questions to brainstorm and really get those results you’re looking for inside of your business, so thank you so much for joining us here at talent optimization with Tracy Scherck and I hope you have a great rest of your day.