LEMEL WILLIAMS

Operations Communication Booklet

brief Conduct a short learning session on the use of new operational communication tools and resources.

The thing about communicating information of this sort, is that it is not only important to get the message across, but to give people a message that they can easily share with others — a message that they would want to share with others.

Using a narrative structure accompanied by drawings, I told the story of how change typically unfolded within operations, and how that story could be improved by working cooperatively and using newly-available tools.

Rather than endless bullet points, tables, charts, and jargon, a short operations narrative accompanied by 65 diagrammatic illustrations was presented in a 10-15 minute talk. The story was followed by an interactive walk-through of the newly-available communication tools.

The story told was a summation of what everyone already knew: In field communication, things go wrong in predictable ways that can be recognized and avoided.

Further, there were tools and resources, designed within the leaders’ context, to help make those corrective actions easy.

The talk brought some clarity to the benefits of following the new process, which saved time and effort for both sender and receiver.

Storytelling is useful, and can be entertaining, but only narratives that contain actionable contexts that are relevant to the audience can support good operational and cultural change.

result Publishing on the company’s intranet using the new tools and guides was increased year-over-year by over 30%, and anecdotal comments were largely positive. The true challenge was maintaining the level of engagement, as this represented a significant change to the way things had been done before.