‘Fire-fighting’ is a term commonly used among communications professionals to describe day-to-day life, and while that might sound a bit dramatic, it’s not uncommon for a busy team to bounce from a burning issue to a hot topic then a flaming crisis and back again.
Even without having crises to deal with, every communications team will face multiple and sometimes conflicting demands from colleagues – each facing their own pressures – or external clients who, to be frank, expect to be at the top of the list at all times.
Meeting those demands – plus those inflicted from the outside such as media calls that need an urgent response – can be a constant test of prioritisation skills for even the best of us.
And then there are the aspects that people don’t tend to jump around about until the deadlines come knocking – like planning ahead to coherently support your company’s business plans, producing reader-friendly reports that not only give facts but tell a great story, and delivering positive ongoing communications campaigns. With so many tasks competing for attention, when something doesn’t have a fire lit under it, it can seem only practical to bump it down the list of things to do.
But all those demands are equally valid and the work still has to be done. One crisis or busy patch doesn’t mean you can put everything else ‘on hold’. Having comprehensive plans in place to manage routine work will help make sure you have the capacity and flexibility to fight the fires when they inevitably come.
So, why not bite the bullet and close your laptop for a few hours? Get your team together (or grab a flask of coffee and plenty of biscuits if there’s just you), and have a go at this:
- Plan out your weekly, monthly and annual projects and allocate time to each
- If you have clients or projects with set hours of support, schedule all of these in, allowing extra time for admin
- Be realistic about how long jobs actually take to complete so you allow enough time – always presuming a project or task will go smoothly and take the least possible time could get you into trouble
- If you have a team, allocate the right person for the right job – experienced team members shouldn’t be tied up with jobs that someone else could complete (and giving junior staff more responsibility will help bring them forward too)
- Remember to schedule time for regular meetings of all kinds – team meetings, senior manager and board meetings, project planning meetings and so on
- Now look at your capacity. Track what needs to be delivered and the hours needed to complete it, then check that against budget, staffing levels and costs. We’d all like to live in a world where we can do everything we’d like to but you may not have enough budget to provide the workforce you need to deliver everything. It can often be more cost-effective to bring in additional, external capacity for certain ‘pressure point’ times, to cover staff leave or to deliver individual projects, rather than employ someone in-house on a full-time permanent basis.
At Sorted Communications we can help with exactly that – working as an extension of your existing team for a day, a week, a month or longer, on either a regular or ad hoc basis. Contact us today for a 10-minute chat to see how we could help.