![Just as a cat leaps chasing a butterfly, you can boost internal communication](/sites/default/files/styles/banner_teaser/public/blog/catleap.jpg?itok=RTozZ5Ua)
If you're like most of us, you start the year with great intentions. But then day-to-day pressures set in, and you lost momentum to accomplish awesome advancements to internal communication.
That's why you should take a pause right now and reset your objectives. My recommendation is to book a “meeting” with yourself—carve out several hours and mark your calendar as “busy”—and invest in these 7 ways to enhance your program:
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Review the communication plan you prepared in January. How much progress have you made? Are there big important strategies that still need your attention? You’ve still got time to map out action steps to achieve your objectives.
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Revisit your performance management plan. As with your communication plan, the idea is to make sure you flag any strategies or deliverables you’ll need to address before the end of the year. Then develop a game plan for getting these important-but-not-urgent things done.
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Sign up for a workshop, seminar or course. If you’re like most of us, you haven’t yet accomplished all your development goals for the year. Before the week is out, register for the “training” you need.
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Analyze your audience. We spend so much time thinking about the communication preferences of our “clients” (the senior leaders and other people we help communicate) and so little time considering what our “customers” are looking for. So this is a great time to take a close look at your employee audience: study employee demographics, review available survey data or analyze web trends or other usage metrics. The key question: What should you be doing differently to better meet employee needs?
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Have coffee or lunch with a key stakeholder. Spend time with a person who is influential and can help you be successful. Discuss an ongoing project or be more open-ended; find out what’s on his/her mind and what suggestions he/she has for you.
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Catch up on your reading. You’ve probably got a stack of articles or books you’ve been meaning to spend time with—but there’s never time. (Or maybe you need a recommendation? We’ve got a cool e-book—49 ways to improve employee communication—you might find interesting.) You’re not going to read everything this week, but carve out a couple of hours to getting up to speed.
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Try something new. This can be a small improvement like writing web articles differently. Or it can be a big departure like creating a radical new approach to upcoming town halls meetings.
In any case, there’s no time like right now to try a new approach and take a great leap forward.