The simple communication formula for keeping your team on track

As you work, do you know what your overarching goal is? For the day, the week, the year? How about your partners and your team? Do you have a simple message and delivery system you use to you share core goals, progress and next actions with those audiences over and over?

The king of the Internet is paring back.

Google has been slowly shuttering some of its less popular or less effective services. Most recently, this included the shared items feature in Google Reader, which allows users to create a linkblog they share with others as a web page or RSS feed. After launching the service, Google didn't seem to give it much love. As of 3/30, the service will no longer be available.

In a down economy, it is way to easy to get stretched too thin. We are all trying to drive greater results with less resources, right? Smaller budgets, less staff, less available time and attention from partners. It's tough. It's the time we have to stay loyal to the core value we are trying to deliver. It's also the right time to pare down the messages you put out to your partners and your staff so they stay focused, too.

Getting the most from our teams and our partners requires an ongoing dialogue with consistent message points around the reasons we are working together. It's a fairly simple formula. The trick lies in staying with it.

The simple formula is:

Communicate the core goal. What is the value you are trying to create, the number you are assigned to reach, etc.
Measure and share progress against. Update often.
List next actions on the road to reaching the goal. Make sure everyone understands each individual's next actions and the next milestone the team needs to reach.

Then share that again and again. In email. Post it on the wall. Post on a team intranet page. Stay with simple consistency in messaging to your team and partners, and it will help them stay with simple consistency as they work toward your common goal.

My communication campaign needs a little fine-tuning. Especially on the message delivery system side. How is yours working?