A Serial Non-Comm's Path to Sharing Bliss

Most evenings coming home from work I feel like I have to struggle to form words.  The day is packed with constant communication to clients, team members, vendor partners, the interested public, the investment bankers...you name it!  How could I possibly communicate more?

Yet, if you look at the feedback from my team - it's nearly a constant request for...you guessed it...more communication.  And, if you look at my results, this is always at least one thing that day I did not properly communicate.  One a day, 365 a year, tends to add up!

As a lifelong non-comm - my word for a person (like me) who doesn't naturally communicate or share on a regular basis - the demands I face daily as a CEO have pushed me far outside my starting point.

I love to communicate - to speak, meet, share, and write.  It is great once I get started - I simply don't have that one, enviable trait of great communicators - the natural habit that prompts them to share regularly.

For those of you who share my non-comm pain - I thought communicating a few of the steps I have taken and plan to continue to take may assist in your business or personal lives as well.  I have a feeling this journey will last my lifetime.

1.) Time is the enemy of great communicators - Leverage it to win the game

As our business has grown over time, the funny, diverging trend I have identified is that:

a.) Expectations for more frequent, detailed, and informative communications from all parties (customers, team, vendors, etc.) continually grow and;

b.) Time available to craft and distribute those communications compresses.  

What a joy - higher expectations, more complexity, and dwindling time.  As our investor relations team saw this trend continue to converge, we came up with a great solution - leverage.  We needed to find a way to distribute simple communications to larger groups of our clientele without the need for hours or days of prep work.  Simply put, how could we spend an hour of executive time and produce direct, valuable communication to existing and prospective customers.

Here's a few things we've done:

a.) CEO Call - A one hour call, hosted by yours truly and one of our top team members, designed to walk through status of our investments, ongoing projects, and provide answers to questions we hear throughout the month.  With a relatively short prep time (why should anyone in leadership need time to prepare to talk about what you do on a daily basis), we tend to connect with 30-60 live listeners and over a hundred total listeners via our recordings, each month!  

b.) Lunch with Caliber - twice a month we offer an introduction to Caliber.  We buy lunch, host it in our office and provide an office tour, overview of Caliber and what we have to offer, and a chance to talk to key members of the team, depending on who is in the office that week.  It's simple, cheap, effective, and we have an ongoing waiting list for attendees.  Most importantly, it provides stakeholders interested in Caliber a chance to directly and personally connect with the people who care for their capital.  3 hours per month of work time to personally connect with approximately 20 great people.

c.) Regular live events and regular web events - Typically once a month, at a minimum, we create relevant information and presentations for interested parties to attend.  These events are designed to be informative and valuable as well as to create a relaxed environment for people to personally connect (if live). 

d.) President's Call - Also once a month, this 30 min live call and recording is a great way to connect on topics that are less focused on the products and services Caliber provides and more focused on basic blocking and tackling in business.  We share insight on the lessons we've learned growing Caliber with the hope those lessons will assist other business owners and the business community at large.

These four examples show the principle of leverage - something we have utilized to offset the non-comm effects I personally experience and that our organization experiences.  Following our philosophy of continuous improvement, I expect we will continue to leverage our time and find creative ways to communicate relevant information to the business community.

2.) Creating my personal communication system - utilizing outside forces to ensure necessary communication occurs.

There's a reason I attempt to attend in person or on the phone as many of the weekly and other regular meetings with our team as I possibly can.  Simply put - just being there prompts communication on important happenings in the business that I know about and, importantly, that our team does not yet know.

We've also implemented a task management and communications tool at Caliber, Asana, as well as some best practices to use it.  This tool, as we continue to maximize its benefit, serves to far outpace email in terms of effectively communicating what is happening with important company projects to a wide team of people.

As another example - we have assets and investment deals which incur changes to the plans that are traditionally unpredictable or unexpected.  To get this information to our entire team - we have built a systematic approach to gather data on a simple report, distribute that information to the company, and ensure we are all working off the same plan.  As we refine that process, I anticipate a few hours a week of our team's time will produce a level of detailed, asset-level communication that we've never seen before at Caliber.

What I am finding here for me, personally, is that accountability is key.  As long as we are accountable to some outside force to deliver information, it flows.  If we are not, or are not held accountable, it tends to sit.  Knowing that, we are building accountability through due dates, daily reports, and similar requirements.  It goes a long way to make sure the communication actually happens.

3.) Creating a systematic approach for how information is communicated

For me, this is likely one of my biggest weaknesses.  I tell a good portion of every story, and, in the rush to conserve time, may leave out a key party from the communication, or may leave out an important detail.

I've found if I am not ensuring the following:

a.) The entire audience I need to accomplish something is included in the communication,

b.) The "why" of a particular situation is included,

c.) The relevant background behind a particular decision is included, and;

d.) The steps or expectations we have in completing a task (including time) is included,

The communication will not be successful or, it will simply delay the completion of the task or project.

Spending a little more time up front is not my natural instinct - yet it is proving highly valuable.

Closing:

For you fellow non-comm's, I feel your pain.  I feel like every year for the last 8 years I have exponentially increased by capacity to communicate - and it is still not nearly enough.  Good luck on your own personal journey, I will continue to fight the good fight and hope to one day graduate from good to great.

Onward,

Chris Loeffler