Adapt your messaging

It's a very good time to check your default. 

What are the default messages, responses and funnels you've got set up that usually just 'run'?

What do you have that is automated, that will do 'this' if 'that' happens? 

You'll need to change something, most certainly. 

We are seeing and hearing marketing, customer, advertising and communications messaging that is not adapting.

It's time to PULL or PAUSE your canned, pre-written and pre-scheduled content that was done in the motive of 'productivity'. 

It was created in another time. Those images and words were made for another era. 

The language, pace, imagery, message (and metaphors) could be tone deaf, way out of alignment and not a good match for these times.

Check on it ... and then adapt it to these times and tones. 

And soon, you'll probably need to change it again. 

Map the steps

When you’re doing some new things with a team or project, it’s worth mapping out the steps so people get a sense of what’s going to happen.

This isn’t a table or list or spreadsheet - although they may hold some useful data about what needs to be done or supporting information that helps with decision making.

Sensemaking when things are unclear, unknown, uncertain or just new for people, requires us to do more than just write a few words, send a few emails or type a few messages.

All those words! Our brains are full already.

Just as a Google map shows us where we are and where we want to get to, we can use a map like that too. Include a few points like:

Here....

The path or steps to ...

There.

Add a few notes about what’s planned as you guide the team from one place... getting to that other place.

If you’ve got more of your team working remotely at the moment, don’t just rely on all the words or talking heads.

Show them a map they can keep referring back to ... later ... when they need to, when the words get lost and the talking heads are offline.

Collect plenty of ideas

Not just one idea or three, but plenty. You never know when you’ll need them.

Many people ask me about my blogs and posts.

They ask:

- How do you post everyday?

- How do you come up with ideas?

- Tell me/show me how you do it...

The key things you need are to be able to generate content, to deliver value via that content and then to execute on the idea ... among that is to have a wad of ideas. (I don’t know how many a wad is!)

I focus on ‘curating’ my ideas; collecting them as I think of them. I don’t ’sit down to have a good idea’. I grab them when they arrive. Once collected in an Evernote file, I wander through that file each day and think, ‘which of these ideas is buzzing for me?’ (Singing, buzzing, humming, glowing - whatever the verb, it’s about the idea that I react to.)

That’s the one I pick ... and then I write.

I don't stockpile pre-canned posts.

I don't copy and paste from the past.

It's more like I’m riffing from an idea I collected, likely a while ago - days, weeks, months.

You can do it too… to share your thinking, ideas, thoughts and value.

Become what I call a ‘Leader of Value’. So to get started, collect plenty of ideas.

When overwhelmed people deliver underwhelming presentations

We’ve seen them and been bombarded by them, those dense presentations of data, dot points, slabs of text and diagrams with .... aarrghhh our brain is fried! Sometimes we overwhelm people, overloading them with too many ideas and messages, jamming it all in one deck or pack of information.

It doesn’t make sense. This can drown people; not save them.

So beware; if you’re overwhelmed, busy, running from meeting to meeting, struggling to get clarity in your own mind ... what you create and deliver to others may well be just as messy and overwhelming. It could turn out to be underwhelming though, disappointing, confusing.

It's then easier to just ignore and disengage.

In times of major change, when people are waiting to hear, needing to see and curious to know what the heck is going on, it’s vital we manage our own state of information overload and cognitive load so we're not just passing the chaos on to everyone else.

We’ve got to 'get our head around' our own information before we can begin to think about transferring it to others. Blog posts included 😁

Time spent making things clearer ... is time very well spent. 

The problem with a project roadmap

Many project teams sweat over the project roadmap, the “what’s going to happen and when” of the project. It’s important. It keeps focus and shares intentions and expectations.

And this is all good.

But there could be a problem ... a disconnect of sorts. It’s right there in the name of it, roadmap.

Too often roadmaps are presented as boxes, tables full of words, cells from spreadsheets or complicated-looking calendars.

Tables, cells and columns may be great for actually working on the project, but for many people who don’t work in this way, they’re not so great for engaging and updating on the project story.

When you're dealing with future states or concepts, you've got to go for something that's as realistic as possible. People are in pain from information overload, bandwidth and capacity they don’t have, plus the fear and uncertainty of the unknown stuff that's ahead.

They may not even understand your table.

While you may love your spreadsheet, it may be saying so little to so many.

Road. Map. Keep tables for the work to be done and get better at sensemaking via map making.