Nine Ways To Tear Down Internal Barriers To Team Clarity

POST WRITTEN BY Forbes Business Development Council including Nathan Hasse, Simpatico’s EVP of Business Development 

In business, it’s crucial for all team members to understand their responsibilities and how they fit into the overall organizational strategy. If anyone on your team feels like they’re in the dark and lack the clarity to do their job efficiently, it’s important to confront the issue before allowing it to hinder your company’s growth.

Nine Forbes Business Development Council members shared tips for overcoming common internal barriers like poor communication and unclear job roles. Consider how their advice could help create clarity in your business.

1. Stay In Your Lane

I call it the “stay in your lane” strategy. Businesses can fail without clarity, focus and rifled approaches. Team members should stay in their lane, meaning they should focus on what they do best, to make sure they are maximizing on their responsibilities. While their feedback is appreciated and listened to, those ideas are shared and executed by the appropriate teams, and contributors can get back in their lane. – Wayne Elsey, Elsey Enterprises

2. Align Departmental Goals With Company Strategies

I find it’s important to set company strategies that are communicated with department leaders who, in turn, will set their goals based on the company initiatives. Then I share that with the entire company and track progress in our all-hands meetings. It’s imperative that everyone knows what the goals of the organization are and how they personally line up with those goals. – Bobby Marhamat, Stealth Startup

3. Hold Daily Stand-Ups

A lack of understanding about organizational goals and objectives often stems from poor communication. Daily stand-ups (an overview of daily tasks) allow for constant feedback, the opportunity for employees to voice concerns and a chance to reinforce the bigger picture. There are many tactics you can use to ensure organizational goal congruence; however, this is one of the most effective strategies I’ve used. – Scott Douglas Clary, Bedrock Affect

4. Define Responsibilities Through A Standardized Process

Develop a standardized process for defining job roles and how each role has a responsibility for the overall success of the company. During the year, track how these defined, common responsibilities affect the growth of the business. By creating consistency in employees’ joint efforts toward the company’s success, you‘ll see improvements in your business development strategy. – Christian Valiulis, Automatic Payroll System

5. Grant Direct Access

I personally believe that especially as my agency has scaled, the biggest impact we have had in creating a strong culture for employees and client success has been the fact that everyone in our company has fairly direct access to my partners and me through Slack. This makes for an open organization and easy escalation on major accounts. – Jared Shaner, Trellis

6. Continually Review Your Performance Guidelines

Clarity of expectations and a good job description can help. First, you have to hire and keep the best talent, then give them the guidelines on how they can evaluate the success of their position. Visual stats boards with KPIs and quarterly performance plans are ways we as a company have established expectation guidelines that are visible on wall-mounted dashboards at all times. – Nathan Hasse, Simpatico

7. Get Everyone Involved In Brainstorming Issues And Initiatives

Our C-suite has an entrepreneurial spirit; we stretch boundaries and empower teams to believe in possibilities. We walk the halls and call random cross-functional groups for brainstorming through top-of-mind issues and encourage candid feedback from employees. This helps them get involved, remain resilient in the face of change, and stay on board during both challenging and successful times. – Shailendra Singh, MarketsandMarkets

8. Communicate Frequently And Through Multiple Channels

Frequency is the key to communication and leads to better outcomes. Communication should not only happen frequently but also through different channels internally, whether spoken or written. Information should always be documented somewhere. In a vast sea of emails, chat, social media, and so on, your communications need to be frequent to cut through the clutter and make sure your team digests it. – Gregory Kim, Slickdeals

9. Put Your Company’s Values First

Lack of clarity in job descriptions and communications often starts with underdeveloped values, missions and visions for the organization. If the company exists to “make money,” then you can expect the job duties to be equally vague. Turn this around by getting crystal clear on the vision, mission and values of the company and then make sure all communications and job descriptions serve the mission. – Brandon Ficara, Brandon Ficara Consulting

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