Nonprofits
Clear communication
How to focus your employees on your company's goals
By Erik Cassano
Smart Business Indianapolis | January 2009
Page 1 of 2
Ellen Annala, president and CEO
United Way of Central Indiana
Ellen Annala says that to
communicate effectively,you need clarity — clarity of
vision, clarity in your messages
and an ability convey your messages in different forms.
You also need to show your
employees that communication
is a two-way street — that they
can access you as easily as you
can access them, says the president and CEO of United Way of
Central Indiana.
Clarity and accessibility are
crucial themes for Annala at her
$58 million community service
organization as she works to
keep internal staff and external
volunteers following the same
path toward the same over-arching goals.
“There are a lot of relationships, so there are a lot of
nuances to what we do,” she
says “I think it’s really important for me to not just be an
external person but be accessible and involved internally.”
Smart Business spoke with
Annala about how to use good
communication practices to
keep your organization focused.
Set the tone. It starts with the
CEO. The CEO has to have clarity of vision and priority and has
to regularly communicate that.
The CEO is the first teacher of
the organizational priorities.
Secondly, you can’t leave communication to chance. We do a
lot of training here with our
managers and others on supervisory skills and relationships.
You have to structure in communication. I remember reading
an article about one CEO who
has a five-minute meeting every
single morning. It’s a stand-up
meeting. People don’t sit down,
but they come in and learn what
is happening today.
I think that’s the kind of structure you want, where you’re
very cognizant of giving people
the tools and information they
want.
We opened up a new portal
on our Web site that is just for
staff. We thought that as much
as we work on communication,
there is still just basic access to
information, so we wanted to
increase the access for them.
The third thing I would say is
that the organization needs to
be very clear on providing communication tools. We provide a
basic communication guide so
that everybody is on message.
For us, it’s not just employees;
it’s also volunteers. So we provide a communication guide
that helps get everybody on
message.
The fourth one is to make
sure opportunities are structured in for two-way communication. I’ll get an e-mail from
the receptionist if the receptionist thinks there is something
important that I need to know.
A fifth point would be having
fun. It’s not all formal. There
have to be opportunities for
that informal and fun exchange,
whether it’s a company picnic or a holiday party or a birthday
lunch, there needs to be some
time where you can be with
people and be on a more
human level.
