Hands up if you’re in the middle of a project where the initial enthusiasm has waned due to unforeseen blocks, difficult conversations, or missed deadlines and where the promise of something better seems such a very long way away.
At Slack Communications, we’re moving from the initial excitement of Vic joining as co-owner/director into the concentrated effort of repositioning the business as one that encompasses all of our talents and expertise – both that of the directors, Becky and Vic, and of our growing pool of associates. We’re finding our energy has peaks and troughs, relationships need care and attention, and that our busy client schedule often distracts us from working on the business.
We know from our clients that every organisation faces challenges around managing day-to-day work while implementing new projects – whether they’re restructuring teams or moving to hybrid working; overhauling websites or procuring a CRM; undergoing a rebrand or rethinking comms and campaigns strategies. We thought we’d share a few of our experiences.
So, what have we learned about navigating day-to-day business whilst managing change?
1. Agree your approach
We know how much energy and brain power is needed to deliver business-as-usual whilst taking on a new challenge so before we even started, we set some expectations around how we will:
Focus on doing a good job with clients – including not taking on new business if we’re going to over-stretch ourselves
Plan what needs to happen in what order to get the expanded business up and running
Build in time for reflection on what’s working well and what needs adjusting
Capture and share what we’re learning so new practice becomes part of business-as-usual
Agree that if things are not going to plan, we have a means of holding sensible conversations to find a way forward
2. Plan your plan
After setting out our approach, we identified current and potential areas of work which would need mini plans, each with its own objectives and milestones. We picked out the following activities:
Laying our foundations
Managing workload
Recruiting and retaining excellent people
Launching our new offer and brand
We’ve taken a flexible approach to our mini plans, knowing that they are interdependent and therefore subject to stopping, starting and adjustment. We’re using the milestones from the mini plans as a map rather than a series of hard deadlines.
3. Lay your foundations
We have an exciting vision for the future but what do we need to move along from our current position? Thinking about the mini plans above, we’re looking across the business to understand:
What processes, meetings, materials and documents do we currently use?
How effective are these current activities and resources for what we want to achieve?
What needs adapting, creating or removing to make sure there’s logic, consistency and efficiency to our day-to-day work?
What needs developing now to smooth the way into our future?
When we think about each of our business activities and processes, who has responsibility for, or input into, which areas?
Where is the work going well, duplicated, over-complicated or not happening?
How are we distributing work to make the most of people’s time and skills?
How are we prioritising people’s work to meet the mini plan milestones?
So far, our review of how we currently work has helped create a better rhythm to our day-to-day operations, focused everyone’s areas of responsibility and reduced meeting times.
Now we’re curating proposals and client resources we’ve created separately over the years to create a one-stop-shop for resources such a training courses and tools.
Our emerging ways of working are also showing us where we need extra capacity and expertise for our future work.
4. Manage workload
Balancing business-as-usual with the demands of a new project is hard. Emails stack up, your to-do list lengthens and you’re running to stand still. To manage our business workload, we’ve tightened our processes:
Scheduling short, regular slot meetings with clear agendas and expectations of what everyone needs to bring
Agreeing and recording actions at each meeting
Making the most of shared platforms to organise ourselves: AirTable for project management and resources; QuickBooks for invoicing and timesheets; WhatsApp groups for internal comms
To manage our own workload so that we continue to deliver a high standard for clients but without burning ourselves out, we know we need to be flexible and that our business priorities and deadlines may shift. We also don’t want to fall foul of growing too fast, too soon, and so we’ve accepted that this may also mean turning down new work.
5. Recruit and retain excellent people
Running any project means finding the right expertise for current and future needs – whether that’s external consultants and short-term hires.
At Slack Communications, we’re welcoming new associates to help with our business needs and deliver excellent service for our clients. With colleagues working in four countries, in part-time roles, on different aspects of the business, with different clients that are also spread across the world, we’re creating ways to:
Meet people’s availability, through:
Scheduled meetings for teams and for individuals
Asking that everyone keep their diaries up to date
Asking that any problems are flagged early so we can be responsive and flexible
Communicate with each other by:
Creating clarity over who does what in the business
Setting clear agendas and allocating actions
Recording activity on shared spaces including AirTable and QuickBooks
Dealing with ad hoc queries and requests on WhatsApp groups
Help each other by:
Sharing our resources via AirTable
Asking for ideas and a pair of hands rather than struggling alone
Raising opportunities for work, and concerns about workload, early on
Celebrating what we achieve in our work
We’re finding our groove right now and we’re proud and heartened by our colleagues’ support, enthusiasm and ‘can-do’ attitude.
6. Launch our new offer and brand
The culmination of any project deserves time spending on its rollout and launch. At Slack Communications, we’re getting ready to share our new offer – complete with an exciting rebrand!
But you’re going to have to wait a while for the full reveal as planning and executing a project launch is just as important as everything we’ve done to get us here.
Until then watch this space!
