From Grid to Great: A Simple Tool Wins Big Respect

When I worked in corporate communications for a Fortune 100 company, I regularly met with leaders from across the organization. One leader always had the same question for me before we adjourned our meeting: “What are you hearing in the organization that I should know about?”

I appreciated this question not only because he was an interested and invested leader, but also because it proved a point that others often overlooked: Corporate Communications has a broad view of what’s happening across an organization. 

We’re talking with leaders and employees. We’re working with HR, IT, legal, marketing and operations. We’re listening to feedback from the front lines, seeing what's happening in the C-suite and we’re watching all that’s occurring externally and how it might affect the business internally. 

We often know details before others do and we’re sharing it all in various ways to internal and external stakeholders. That vantage point comes from the sheer amount of work we do to keep information moving across the company. It’s easy to overlook the volume of communications we’re responsible for but it’s far more than emails, intranet updates and town halls. It’s also talking points for the CEO, company updates for leaders to share with their teams, board briefings, news releases with company announcements, media training for company executives and the list goes on. 

Many don’t understand the breadth of what we do or how much work it all requires. 

Make your work visible 

As a communications leader, you know the value you bring to your organization every day, but honestly, most people you work with do not. Too often, people outside the function assume corporate communications simply executes what leaders ask for. The most effective way I’ve found to change that perception is to show people the full scope of the work rather than tell them about it.

I’m a huge fan of creating a simple document to share periodically with the people you need to influence and bring along with you at your organization. The document captures all the communications vehicles across the company. And while the specifics are different for every organization, the document provides a clear picture of the corporate communications function.  

And it works. I’ve walked C-suite leaders through a document like this at several companies and have seen the realization come across their faces, often saying, “I didn’t know you were responsible for all of this.” I won’t pretend that isn’t gratifying but validation isn’t really the point. What matters is that people understand more about what the team contributes.   

Build your own one-pager 

Creating a document like this for your organization is easy. Start by brainstorming all you manage and produce on a regular basis. Capture everything.  

Then, for each, add the following four pieces of information:  

• What communication vehicle or channel is it (email, intranet, event, social media, etc.) 

• Who is the audience (employees, leaders, stakeholders, etc.) 

• When is it published or happening (how often, the frequency) 

• Why does it exist (what’s its purpose?) 

  
  

Finally, ask if there’s something else about each that needs to be communicated. If so, add it.  

Once you have the full picture of all you do, see if you have opportunities to consolidate, clarify or eliminate anything. Look at it from your audience’s perspective; you don’t want to overwhelm them but you do want them to see the breadth. And the easiest way to keep this on one page is to create a grid with the information.  

OK, now what?  

The grid is most useful when it stays current and becomes part of your regular conversations, and you have plenty of ways to use it regularly.  

Use it when onboarding a new executive or leader, pull it out during annual planning and budget discussions and share it when explaining why a request may need to be prioritized against everything else already on your team’s plate. Use it with the communications team itself, too, especially when you’re feeling buried and overwhelmed. It can help put the volume and breadth of the work into perspective.  

One grid won’t solve every challenge communicators face and don’t count on it to earn you a bigger budget or headcount. But it will help the organization see what your team actually does regularly and cyclically. That matters because so much of what we do is to support other people’s work; it can be easy for our work as communicators to become invisible. 

And as you meet with leaders throughout the organization, perhaps more will begin to ask you, “What else are you hearing in the organization that I should know about?” After all, they know if there’s anyone to ask, it’s you.