When information gets lost in digital collaboration

The use of digital collaboration tools exploded since the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis. But a lot of people are now realising that the quite spontaneous use of these tools is creating some kind of mess in which information gets lost. Strong governance is essential for effective digital collaboration.

Digital collaboration saved us

With the COVID-19 crisis and the imposed teleworking, a lot of organisations suddenly (re)discovered plenty of tools for digital collaboration and communication. Never before, co-workers made so much use of these tools to easily communicate, share and collaborate.

But in some cases, it created a big mess

Digital collaboration tools helped us a lot to overcome these exceptional weeks. But, at the same time, one might start to feel uncomfortable with the amount of information that has been scattered all over shared spaces, chats,... It’s becoming cluttered tangle and no one has a good view of it.

It’s one of the main pitfalls of digital collaboration tools. They are easy to learn and simple to use, but without any governance, information gets quickly scattered all over the place. Think about video discussions generating decisions or agreements which are not documented somewhere in a structured way. Think about documents that have been exchanged somewhere in one of the numerous chats. It’s a nightmare when you need to retrieve them.

Strong governance is a must for effective digital collaboration

Whatever the digital collaboration tools you use, there is a need for strong governance on the way to use them. Be it on the company or on a project team level, participants must agree on a minimum of collaboration principles. Here are some examples of best practices:

• Make sure documents are stored in a clear and secured content structure in your shared digital workplace.

• Make sure you have clear governance (roles and responsibilities) on the way this content structure is set up and managed. Don’t let every user create channels and workspaces as they like.

• Each video call in which decisions or agreements are made should result in a write up which is stored in an agreed place in the content structure. 

• Documents should not be shared in a chat. When referring to a file or document in a chat, don’t put a copy of the document in the chat channel but use a link to the shared document in the content structure.

• Make sure you have a clear view of your security settings and how these are applied. It’s very easy to add someone to a chat or a channel, without realising that this provides this person access to documents or conversations you did not have the intention to share.

Thanks for reading and good luck in your virtual workspaces! Feel free to contact me if you need some help with setting up your digital collaboration governance.

Covid & Change: medical face masks

After a few weeks of Belgian lockdown, Prof. Maarten Vansteenkiste (UGent, Department of Developmental, Personality and Social Psychology) shows that people’s motivation for respecting the lockdown measures is decreasing. He calls for better communication on the “why” behind these measures. The whole fuss behind the medical face masks is a typical example when looked at from a change and communication perspective. 

It’s a fact that these face masks have some advantages when it comes to reducing the spread of infection to others. But they don’t protect you from being infected by others, directly or indirectly. And it requires some discipline and technique to use them in a correct way. It’s nevertheless admitted they are an extra weapon in this global battle, next to (and not replacing) the other obvious measures like social distancing, washing your hands, ...

But in people’s perception, these face masks are thought to be doing a lot more, offering almost full protection against the virus. Wearing them makes them feel safe and protected, as if it was some kind of amulet. It is already demonstrated today through complete absurd behaviours, like people wearing a face mask while driving their own car...

Between fact and perception, there is an enormous gap which would probably lead to unsafe behaviour if these face masks would be largely distributed. The benefits of reducing the spread by wearing face masks in an appropriate way would be largely destroyed by the side effects of people neglecting the other safety rules. Without appropriate information and training, we probably would see a huge increase of admissions in hospitals a week after. To put it a bit boldly: as long as people are wearing masks in their car, we should probably not give them masks, to avoid things getting worse...

Bringing it back to change terminology, the lack of Awareness (the benefits and weaknesses of a medical face mask) and the lack of Knowledge (how to use it properly) regarding these masks would lead to the complete opposite of the desired behaviour and results.

Interesting reads:

• Using face masks in the community - Reducing COVID-19 transmission from potentially asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic people through the use of face masks https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications-data/using-face-masks-community-reducing-covid-19-transmission

• Hoe nauwgezet volgt de Vlaming de coronamaatregelen? En waarom?https://www.ugent.be/nl/actueel/omgaanmetcorona

To ruin the customer experience, it only takes one…

Some time ago I was switching between two cars of a prestigious German brand. I’m a big and loyal fan for more than 20 years now, also due to their great customer experience. So I turned in the old car at the official dealership and drove home in the new one, happy as a child at Christmas…

A few weeks later, I still get billed for the rent of the old car. I’m confident that this is just an innocent mistake. But as I call the company, I’m confronted with an employee insisting that I didn’t turn in my old car. Quite absurd of course, but nevertheless, the employee keeps on insisting that I’m still in possession my old car, despite all the facts and documents proving the opposite. The reality was that the intake process had not been fully respected at the dealership. This resulted in a tiny single check box remaining “open” in the employee’s computer.

You would expect that this little detail could be solved in a second. After all, everything was obviously ok. But no, there was only one solution: turn in the car again, scrupulously following the official process, so the check box could finally be ticked. You can imagine how disappointed I was by this quite kafkaesque customer experience. It took several weeks, calls and mails before the manager of the department realised what was happening and finally arranged things.

This story is rather anecdotic, but it’s a good illustration of how an inadequate employee experience can ruin the customer experience. You must realise that, like this major company, you can spend millions of euros and tons of energy on building a nice customer experience. But at the end of the day, it only takes one single employee to ruin everything.

So, the rule is very simple: if you want to create a sustainable customer experience, make sure that every employee is aware of his or her essential contribution to the customer experience. As we illustrated in a previous article, more employees are getting deeply involved in the customer experience.

Secondly, if you expect your employees to contribute actively to the customer experience, make sure you empower them to do so. In this little anecdote, it would have been easy to blame the employee. But maybe he or she has been told to “never, never deviate from the process”, even if forcing the respect of the process would ruin the customer experience. Which was thoroughly applied in my case ;-).

Again, we can easily make the link between customer experience and employee experience:

• If you want to create a sustainable delighting customer experience, you must make sure your employees are aware of their essential role in creating and maintaining the customer experience.

• On top of that, you must make sure they are enabled and empowered to give priority to the customer experience at any time.

Digital transformation is not about technology but about value chains

Many organisations think of digital transformation as a way to inject technology into their existing business. But digital transformation is not about technology. Digital is only an enabler and an opportunity to design new, competitive customer experiences and value chains. This is a golden rule when working on your organisation’s digital transformation.

This holiday we travelled through France, following the sun, booking our hotels just one or two days in advance. The process was simple: we checked on the app of Meteo-France where the sun was heading for the coming days, we checked the area on Google Maps to see where are the most interesting towns or things to see, looked for a nice hotel on booking.com, double checked its reviews on TripAdvisor and finally made the booking in a few clicks. It might seem fancy, but from a customer’s point of view, this process isn’t really disruptive. I did the same thing 30 years ago, using a local newspaper to check the weather, a map of France, a hotel or camping guide and some coins for the phone booth to make the reservation.

What really changes

So the process hasn’t fundamentally changed. Neither did the travel experience. It’s still the same thrill when you arrive at the hotel, hoping you made the right choice, not knowing if it will match your expectations. Two things have changed although: the user experience and the business model behind it.

Digital platforms still allow me to go through the same process, but in a much faster, easier, and smoother way. Yes, the process has been tweaked to create more convenience, but it has not fundamentally changed. Of course I can see the efforts of data marketing pushing me to specific offers, but to be honest, it doesn’t really make a difference. Data marketing in this sector is still in a very early, pushy and rather ineffective stage...

The change is much more dramatic when you look at it from the business side. 30 years ago, travel publishing companies like Michelin or Guide du Routard sold editorial content to me, which I needed to perform my buying process. I had to pay them for their content. After a few years, or whenever travelling to another country, I had to pay for updated or adapted content. To provide this product, these companies had to pay a lot of people to gather, edit and publish content. When I finally made the transaction with a hotel, the publishing company was not involved in the game anymore.

Where there is disruption

The disruption of companies like booking.com does not come from the fact that they are “digital”. Yes, they enhance my customer experience by tweaking the process, using digital to increase the convenience. The disruption comes from the fact that they use the potential of digital to redesign the value chain which supports the travel process. They don’t pay for the content they provide, their customers provide it to them, for free. They don’t sell this content; they only use it in support of their process. In times where too often people think that digital is about disintermediation, they get their money from taking up an intermediary position, with a strong brand, collecting a nice fee on every transaction between a customer and a hotel. So in a nutshell, they rethought the customer’s travel experience and the existing value chains, using digital as an enabler, not as a purpose.

Digital transformation is about redesigning the value chains

This is the point I want to make for those who are working on digital transformation.

• It’s not about getting your company “digital”. It’s about completely rethinking your customer experiences and your value chains, using the features offered by digital to support these.

• This also means that digital transformation is not the privileged playground of a digital team, but a concern for everyone in the company who’s involved in part of the customer experience or the value chain.

• In this transformation journey, it is the management’s responsibility to keep their focus on enhanced customer experiences and value chains, and to resist the sirens of digital “gadgetification” on the surface.

No employee experience, no customer experience

More and more companies are rushing into improving their customer experience. But who's delivering this experience to your customers? The quality of your products or services? Yes! The quality of your communication with your customers? Yes! Your co-workers? Yes, again! Not only because employees are the main driver behind the quality of your products, services and customer communications. But also because, more than ever before, more employees have direct interactions with the final customer. So it seems rather obvious that focussing on customer experience without creating the right employee experience would not make a lot of sense.

The influence of digital and organisational evolution

In today's world, the success of your company is generated by the interactions between your employees and your customers, facilitated by tools and processes. This was already the case yesterday, but some things have fundamentally changed:

• digital has multiplied the different touch points between your customer and your company, meaning also the number of employees involved in these touch points;

• digital is pushing the traditional front-end and back-end applications into each other, becoming something like shared platforms, creating an end-to-end visibility of the interactions in these applications to both customers and co-workers;

• organisations are getting flatter, leaner, giving more responsibilities to co-workers, meaning more of them are involved in a direct customer contact and customer experience.

In other words, the number of touch points and the surface of connection between your customers and your co-workers have both considerably increased. This being considered, it seems rather obvious that a great customer experience cannot be delivered without a great employee experience. The one goes with the other.

The methods for employee experience are not very different from customer experience

There are several methods which have been developed for the design of customer experience that can be very useful in working on your employee experience. Just as with customer experience, you can develop the proper employee experience by:

• working with employee personas to have a vivid and realistic representation of the most significant employee groups;

• mapping the employee journey to understand how it works and what the main moments of truth are;

• listen to employees and incorporate their feedback into experience and process improvements.

Who's in charge of employee experience?

Now that we know how important it is to focus on employee experience with at least the same attention as your efforts for customer experience, the question is to know how you will cope with this in your organisation. Number of companies have already designated a  "chief customer experience officer", but how many have designated a "chief employee experience officer"? Some have made a first effort by designating a "chief happiness officer", but we are not sure this will put the right focus on what is really important, namely the "delivery" of the interactions between customers and co-workers. Defining the right span of both and how they meet in the core of business is one of the main challenges.

As a conclusion, it is safe to say that building a strong customer experience is inseparable from a strong employee experience. Therefor it is important to formalise the responsibility for employee experience in the organisation, while proven methods from the customer experience development can be very helpful in designing your employee experience.

Why project and change management continue to fail

According to research, around 70% of change management programs tend to fail. Amongst the numerous reasons for failure, there is the lack of integration between project management and change management. Adopting an integrated approach will have a dramatic impact on quality, speed, effectiveness and sustainability of the overall change. We'll provide you with 5 simple rules that will dramatically reduce the risks and uncertainties of your transformation projects.

Recognise two disciplines, one objective

Project management and change management have the same objective: increase the probability that projects or initiatives deliver the intended results and outcomes. But their focus is different. Project management mostly focuses on the technical side to ensure that the solution will be developed, designed and delivered effectively. Change management focuses on the people side to ensure that the solution will be embraced, adopted and sustainably used by the co-workers who will have to work differently. It seems quite obvious that both should act in an integrated, coordinated way to produce the desired results. However, we to often see situations where change management is being seen as a sub track of the overall project management.

Don't mess it up with a shoehorn approach

Too often change management tracks are considered as simple sub tracks of the larger project plan, mostly situated in the lower half or near the end of the project plan. When the project or the solution is getting its final forms, change managers start to think about how they are going to sell it to the organisation. Change management programs are being put in place, but there is not much room for change left. The change program is already tied into the boundaries of all the irreversible decisions that have been taken since the early beginning of the project. So room for manoeuvres, for creating acceptance and adoption, is extremely limited. It’s called “change”, but in fact it’s not much more than a “take it or leave it” game. As a result, adaptation and sustainable change will often be extremely low. It's a bit like getting your feet into a too small pair of shoes. Even if you manage to get them in, you will probably not wear them very often.

Get the benefits of an integrated approach

In an integrated approach, the change management tracks are moved to the upper left corner of the project plan, and then deployed in an interwoven way with the project planning. In this approach, change management is being taken into account as from the first day of the project. Project management and change management will interact during the whole duration of the project as two equal forces aiming at the same objective. To achieve this stakeholders and impacted populations will be highly involved from the beginning of the project. Their role changes from "subject" to "participant", from "client / provider" to "co-creator". Considered either from the technical or from the people perspective, this integrated and participative approach will have dramatic benefits on the quality, speed, effectiveness and sustainability of your project.

Benefit #1: quality of deliverables

Classic, waterfall based project management approaches are based on the assumption that all previous steps are the golden standard for the next steps. After functional analysis (which is often a private party between business analysts and IT), end users don't hear about the project anymore until it goes into user acceptance. The reality is that, all along the development process, small distortions will have appeared. Altogether they will have created a huge gap between what the end user was looking for and what will finally have been developed. By integrating change management from the beginning of the project, you make sure that these small distortions are intercepted and corrected on time, thus leading to a higher quality of deliverables.

Benefit #2: speed

It might seem contradictory that you can gain speed by doubling the project management tracks with parallel change management tracks. However, the fact that change will have been integrated from the beginning saves a lot of time for change once the project is being delivered. You don't start from a "take it or leave it" situation, most of the change will already have been accomplished during the project development.

Benefit #3: effectiveness

As the project has not been developed "for", but "in strong collaboration with", stakeholders and impacted populations, the chances that the developed solution is the right answer to what the project was aiming at are much higher. The integrated approach increases your chances of being right from the first time.

Benefit #4: sustainability

Finally, because of the strong integration of project management and change management, the better quality and increased effectiveness, the change will be embraced and adopted in a much more sustainable way on the long term.

5 simple rules to get there

Rule #1: Organise your project and change management differently

As described above, make sure that your project management and change management are integrated in methods, tools and processes, both for progress steering and monitoring. If you are using a project management tool, make sure that both the project management and the change management tracks are integrated and shared in the same tool.

Rule #2: Create the right environment

Over the years most companies, because of the complexity of their processes, have built thick walls between their different departments. Sales, marketing, IT, operations, HR have been used to do things on their own, reducing dialogue with the other disciplines to a strict minimum, based on a kind of naïve belief that this would lead to better performance. But your business performance, the added value for clients and shareholders, is the result of the way these disciplines interact as a whole. The importance of these interdependencies even increases with the growing influence of digital evolution and of customer expectations on your business. So it is of utmost importance that people from different disciplines are in permanent dialogue with each other during the project, far beyond the sparse moments of dialogue that checkpoint meetings and other steering committees pretend to be. It is only in an environment where there is a permanent concern for the business as a whole (and not only for the own discipline) that project management and change management can naturally act together and achieve a common goal.

Rule #3: Recognise the importance of sustainable adoption

A technical development or a new process is never a solution on its own; it is only a part of it. Without sustainable adoption of the solution or process, the only place where you will see the impact of your project will be in the depreciation section of your balance sheet. You will never get an increase in effectiveness, speed, customer satisfaction or cost efficiency without sustainable adoption by the employees who will have to use the technical solution or follow the new process. One simple way to do this is to request that all project induction documents address the approach for sustainable adoption as from the very beginning.

Rule #4: Have a relevant and shared definition of results for accountability

It is common to define results and accountability in a very restrictive way. Project managers will often focus on deadlines, milestones, go-live dates. They are important, but they are not relevant as such for your business. The same goes for the indicators on which change managers will be accountable: is it really the number of communications they issued or the number of people that got training that will be relevant? Quality, effectiveness and sustainable integration of the solution are much more relevant to the organisation and should be the main indicators for which both project managers and change managers should be held accountable. For this rule as well, create à PID template which contains the right and relevant KPI's that will foster this shared accountability.

Rule #5: Hire the right profiles

Project managers tend to be selected on their certifications in a number of methodologies or on their knowledge of specific technical environments. Change managers are expected to be good at interviews and presentations, transforming the business reality into an appealing story. But as demonstrated above, there is a need for project managers and change managers willing to focus, not on a go-live date or on the number of training sessions, but on maximizing the chances that projects or initiatives will deliver the intended results and outcomes for the business as a whole.

Where will this get you?

Integrating change management into your project management from the early start will dramatically reduce the risks and uncertainties of your transformation projects. But you will have to create the right conditions for it to happen: ensure real dialogue between all the stakeholders, define relevant indicators for accountability and get the right profiles on board for both project and change management. If you pay enough attention to these critical success factors, you will maximize the chances that your transformation projects will lead to an effective change and to tangible and sustainable results for your organisation.

Why aren't employees reading my communications?

The secrets of the "Information Needs Pyramid ©"

Whether in a context of change management or internal communications at large, communicators or change managers often get frustrated because their messages, even if they are well presented, do not seem to get the interest of all the co-workers. How can it be that they are not interested by this dramatic strategic change? How can it be that they are not interested in this fabulous merger and acquisition project?

The reason is quite simple. As in Maslow's Needs Pyramid, people have a natural way of putting their information needs into some kind of hierarchy. Combined with our naturally limited absorptive capacity for information, this has a dramatic influence on the way people handle the information you are providing them with. If you don't take these dynamics into account, you will barely succeed in getting your information to all your audiences in your organisation.

• As you can discover in the illustration, co-workers' first interest goes to information they need to do their job.

• On a second level, their interest will go to HR related information which is of concern for them.

• In a next step, but still of high interest, you will find information about their immediate environment, their colleagues and the site they work on.

• In the upper levels, which count on far less interest, you will find information about the business unit they work for and about the group their company is part of.

So this is the basic idea of the "Information Needs Pyramid ©": the further you move away from the primary needs, the less people are inclined to give some of their sparse attention to it.

Co-workers are not interested in bigger picture stories as long as their primary information needs are not fulfilled. This does not mean that people are not interested at all, neither that you should skip the "bigger picture" items in your information strategy. It only means that you have to take these dynamics into account when constructing your communications.

How do you work with this? Content, structure and channel.

Taking into account the Information Needs Pyramid will have an impact on 3 levels: the content of your communication, the way you structure it and the way you activate the communication in the different information channels available in your organisation.

Provide what is necessary to climb the staircase

Using the "Information Needs Pyramid ©" means that, while building your content, you first make sure that you identify where your subject is situated on the pyramid. Once you have identified this, you make sure that all the underlying layers of the pyramid are covered by your content. Let's say you have to communicate about a strategic acquisition the group your company belongs to is doing. We are clearly at the top of the pyramid here, chances are low that this information will be of high interest for all the co-workers. By applying the pyramid principle, you should complete this basic content with information on the way this acquisition will have an impact on the business, on the local site, on the department and on people's daily job. That way you provide your audience with the necessary steps to reach the higher levels of the pyramid.

Put the steps in the right order

Now that you have the necessary material to build your stairs, you will have to put them in an attractive order. When structuring your information, make sure that you provide the steps in the right order by inverting the pyramid and starting with the primary needs before moving on to the higher steps with the strategic aspects of your message. Or, at least, provide your structure with the necessary anchor points or hooks allowing people to easily find their way to their primary information needs.

Build smart staircases

Use the "Information Needs Pyramid ©" principle to build smart communication channels.

The most commonly known example of an ineffective channel is the corporate magazine containing only… corporate information. A lot of money has been spent on the layout and illustrations, and, as the printer is printing anyway, he's asked to print enough copies so that each co-worker can receive his own copy. Frustration arises all over the management boards when they realise that these beautiful publications are hardly read!

And yet, some of these magazines are nevertheless successful. Not because of their fancy layout, but simply because of their intelligent use of the Information Needs Pyramid, where secondary levels of interest are smartly interwoven with primary levels of interest. As people are navigating their way through the magazine to find their subjects of primary interest, they travel through other subjects, situated at the top of the pyramid, which they might as well look at while passing by.

Another example of using the "Information Needs Pyramid ©" in channel management is the technique of driving down your higher level information into so called "proximity channels". Proximity channels typically contain information related to the primary levels of the pyramid and are therefore well read. By drilling down your higher-level information (with an adapted content and structure) into these proximity channels, your chances of reaching all co-workers will increase favourably.

The "Information Needs Pyramid ©": not a mystery but a beacon

The "Information Needs Pyramid ©" reflects the natural tendency of people to organise their own absorption of information, in a way that is determined by their needs and their absorptive capacity. There is nothing mysterious about it, it's even rather evident.

It's a beacon for anyone in a company in charge of getting information or a specific message to all layers of the organisation. By applying the simple rules of the pyramid while building your content, structuring your information and injecting it in a smart way into the company's channels will highly increase the reach and understanding of your communication.

Useful resources: round-robin tables for a speed sharing session

Get the maximum of ideas in a minimum of time.

Speed sharing allows you to retrieve a maximum of ideas or opinions from a group of people in a limited time span.

It's based on the speed dating principle: each participant meets each other participant for a determined number of minutes to exchange ideas or opinions on a certain topic. In each next round, the participant continues to build on the insights he or she got during the previous rounds. In the end, participants share their findings in a plenary session, which allows the group to continue to work on the main ideas that have been generated.

How do you organise this? The Berger pairing or round-robin table.

The challenge is to make sure that every participant has seen every participant at the end of the session. You could calculate this by hand or build a formula in Excel but there is an easier way: just download our pre-established Berger or round-robin tables for groups of 4 to 30 participants. The table shows you which participant should meet which another participant in each specific round.

Click here to get our free copy of the Berger Pairing Tables, from 4 to 30 participants. No credit card or e-mail required, it's just for the pleasure of sharing ;-).

You can easily reduce the time for each conversation during the process. You can start for example with 2 x 10 minutes for the first rounds and end with 2 x 3 minutes for the last rounds, depending on the number of new ideas that are still being generated at each round.

If you need help for the development or facilitation of an effective workshop in Dutch, French or English to align, share, or engage, get in touch by mail on  xavier.huysmans@exhocet.be, by phone on +32 (0)2 245 35 00 or by using the contact form.

On what kind of diet is your organisation?

Consider the paradox. On one side there is this obsessive focus on efficiency and cost reduction. On the other side there is a growing awareness that many of these efficiency efforts are leading to unhealthy situations where co-workers are suffering from paralysing stress, burn outs, ... Well intentioned concepts like "lean management" are perceived as a must and as a threat at the same time, even though not always by the same people...

Couldn't you compare this with going on a diet?

You can rush into a crash diet at any time, some of you are probably considering this very seriously after the excesses of last weeks. In some cases you will really notice spectacular results, at least on one part of the scorecard. But what about your other KPIs? Are you still feeling physically well? How sustainable is your loss of weight? We all know that these crash diets don't work and even can be dangerous. We know that it is not about wildly cutting on food, but about adopting a healthier nutrition pattern and life style. It is the only way to sustainably lose weight, keep in shape and feel great.

Isn't it the same for our companies and organisations?

Aren't they rushing too often into crash diets? Finding themselves after a few months with a skinny but low performing organisation? Putting their human capital, their commercial attractiveness and their sustainability at stake? Instead of looking for healthy patterns of costs and benefits. Cutting on fats and sugars, but within the framework of a healthy organisation, powered by engaged employees, aiming for sustainable performance.

Aiming for sustainable effectiveness

Of course pressure on management is more compelling than ever. Managers' panic when receiving the e-mail with the latest monthly report is the same as the panic of naked men and women just before stepping on their bathroom scale. But it shouldn't keep them from looking at the scoreboard as a whole. Where striving for effectiveness is like striving for a healthy nutrition pattern. Where nourishing human capital and feeding the connections between employees are at the base of the performance pyramid.

How resilient is your team against sudden sick leaves?

Roles, responsibilities and processes are crucial for your effectiveness

They allow each team member to know where he fits into the organisation, where at the same time the team as a whole knows what they can expect from each individual team member. It's not about squeezing people into boxes, it's about having clear agreements on who does what. Processes are not mended as barriers. They are intended to give confidence to all people who are concerned by the process and to structure their communications.

How resilient is your team?

The only nice thing about flu epidemics is that they reveal how resilient your processes are regarding sudden sick leaves. What happens if one or more employees suddenly call in sick? To what extent does this affect your running operations?

Assess your resilience

Here are some simple things you would like to check with a quick assessment of your situation. Don't make it too complicated and focus on the most essential processes and roles.

Establish a matrix, with the main roles on one axis, the main steps of the critical process on the other axis. Now fill in the names of your team members on the grid. Keep it simple! Something like this.

Navigate through your grid and at each critical step, ask yourself:

• If this person falls out, is there someone else who can immediately take over (part of) his or here role?

• If this is not the case, how critical is this fall out for the process?

• How much time can we do without the role being fulfilled? After how many days does it starts to get critical?

Make an action plan

Having made this assessment, you will have a good overview of the hot spots you will have to tackle. Again, don't try to fix them all, but concentrate on those which are really critical. Identify the kind of measures you could take to fall back on for the most critical steps. Take timing into account and work with timeframes of one day, two days, one week, one month. Or use any other granularity of timeframe which would be relevant for your activity.

Participation and communication!

Having made this plan will not help you as such. Make sure that all your team members are aligned on the solutions you have developed. Share your draft with your team at the next team meeting, let them challenge it, take into account their input before finalising it. Make it available to all, easy to find and retrieve. Make sure you will reassess your plan on a regular basis.

One more thing...

Don't forget to include yourself as a team manager and as the person who has to ensure the smooth running of these processes. And if you do forget, don't get sick!

Liked this idea?

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