💃 3 Common Problems, One Potent Solution 🕺

Good morning, Salesforce Nerds! 80% of you are living at least one of these scenarios-

👉 You have direct reports.

👉 You work with a PMO (or project manager, product owner, etc).

👉 Your boss is a micromanager.

What if there was one solution to rule them all?

THIS IS NOT SPRAY AND PRAY!

Over-Communication Considerations

The takeaway from this article is how to use over-communication as an effective tool in your toolbox.

So before diving in, here are 3 considerations for you-

It’s an Intermediate-level Technique

❌ This is not as easy peeling a banana. But it’s not as hard as breaking down a mango.

✅ It’s somewhere in the middle, like cutting an onion 🔪🧅 (tears included? 😂😭).

This is NOT Spray and Pray

❌ It is not mindlessly spraying emails, slack messages, and Chatter updates.

✅ It requires strategy and thoughtfulness 🙂.

Not an Easy Button

❌ It is not an easy button!

✅ It takes effort. And there is some art and science to it, too. Here’s what we mean-

The art 🧑‍🎨 is when you communicate. It’s not spray and pray! So is it waterfall, ie a bunch of info at once? Or is it a drip, ie multiple communications over time?

The science 🧑‍🔬 is the content of your communications. It needs to be relevant, accurate, and loop-closing, aka minimizing follow up questions.

Not easy….

So with these considerations considered, time to dive in ⬇️

AN UNEXPECTED BENEFIT

Direct Report Alignment….Plus More!

If you’re a manager, it’s actually impossible to over-communicate with your team.

Now, understand effective communication versus micromanaging.

❌ Communicating to your direct reports that they have 5min bathroom breaks and cannot go at the same time as each other is micromanaging.

✅ The objective of effective communication is to gain alignment, NOT to give orders. For example, asking your team to have their projects be on-time, on-budget is a reasonable request.

And then, over-communicating the things that will control timeliness and budget, like taking good notes 📝, eating the frog 🐸, and managing exceptions.

A bonus reason for over-communicating with your direct reports is each time you communicate, you also open the door for them.

Here’s what we mean-

Your direct reports aren’t always going to know exactly what to do. But they may be afraid to speak up 🙊.

And even if you open the door once, twice, and three times, it may take them longer than that to build up the courage.

So, if you are consistently (over-)communicating objectives, strategy, and tactics, and then closing with “Anyone have any questions? How can I help?” then you are increasing your team’s exposure to your support 🤗.

PMs, POs, PMOs, OH MY

PMO Handholding 🤝

Holding hands is fun!

It gives you a little dopamine, and the person’s hand you hold gets the warm and fuzzies too!

Whether that’s your child, your significant other, or the PMO (we’ll use PMO, but we’re referring to Project Managers, Product Owners/Managers, Program Managers, Project Leads, or whoever is in charge of task management) - dopamine for all!

When it comes to over-communication…that’s actually the PMO’s job 😅.

But who doesn’t love when someone does their job for them 😅😅?

And more importantly, when is the PMO effectively over-communicating 🫣.

^{Hint - they’re not.}

So if you’re the one person on the project who is over-communicating to the PMO you’ll accomplish one of two positive things -

👍 You will be the unicorn 🦄 providing a steady stream of constant updates to the PMO, and so you will effectively control the narrative of your work and your impact to the project.

👍 You will be CYA’ing, whether the PMO includes your updates in their project meeting notes, or not. You have the email/Slack/Confluence trail of your comms. Receipts 🙌!

And the first scenario is most likely. The PMO will appreciate your status updates, your blocker descriptions, what you worked on yesterday and what you will work on today.

It’s their job to compile those things, and white-gloving it for them makes their life easier 🤗 🤝.

BEAR SPRAY…BUT FOR WORSE THAN BEARS!

Micromanager Repellent

Micromanagers lack trust in their team (and possibly in themselves, if they’re being honest…).

They also desire control.

One of a micromanager’s primary methods of control is to be one inconsequential step ahead of you 🙄.

For example, if there’s a meeting at 8am, then you’ll get a ping at 7:58am asking if you’re joining 🙄.

To effectively (over-)communicate in this example, you’ll be one strategic step ahead of them. Something like “Looking forward to your 8am meeting tomorrow! What are the topics of discussion so I can prepare to engage?”

And then, you can take their response and plug it into ChatGPT for some quality engagement options 😘!

Another characteristic of a micromanager is to pester you with update requests - what is the status of this Flow, when will that report be done?

Again, be a step ahead of the micromanager. Here’s an example-

🧠 Create a dashboard, Kanban board, or a shared document that includes the task and status. Then, just point your feisty manager to your accessible solution while sipping your coffee ☕️.

If your micromanager is especially micro-y, and you’re especially devious 😈 prepared, then you can anticipate their ask for a molecular-level breakdown and offer to hop on a call so that you can present all the things.

SOUL FOOD

Today’s Principle

and now....Salesforce Memes