Quantity is Key

Can you offer some advice for consistent actions that can be taken to improve team communications?

It's quantity. I mean honestly, I believe communications is all about quantity. There’s all kinds of studies out there that say people have to hear something seven times before it really sticks. So, you need to have regular, I'll call it all hands. You need to have team meetings. You need to ensure that there are ways and vehicles, in terms of communicating. But communication is something you can never do too much of. You can never communicate too much. And in times like these especially whatever level you're communicating, I would encourage you to communicate more. When times are really challenged and people are stressed and there's lots of uncertainty, which is exactly where we are right now, people want more than ever to hear from you. One of my companies Verizon, Verizon does a daily, they're up to a daily equivalent of all hands. They call it Verizon Up. Its virtual noontime every day, there's always something. Now you think daily people are going to drop off and stop watching. They have record numbers of people listening every single day right now, but it talks to what's going on. People want to know so they can use the data and the information they're getting to help them feel like, okay, I know what's happening. I know where we're going. It builds confidence.

If you don't know where you're going, it's like getting in an Uber car and they only tell you periodically where they're actually taking you. Well, that doesn't feel very good. You kind of want to know each step of the way. Hey, am I heading towards the direction I thought I was going? You want to know that that's what you're doing. If you ever get in the car and it's taking you a different way from what your map says, the first thing you do is panic. It's like wait, excuse me. You panic. Well, this stands true for an employee in a company. If I'm not getting visibility on where it is that we're going, I'm not feeling good about it. If I'm not feeling good about it, there's no way I can be as productive as possible. And there's already so much stress going on that I'm just, the company is adding to it versus taking it away.