PART 02: READY? AIM! // SUMMARY

01 Communicate with an AIM

AIM is the foundation of Generative Communication. Effective communication that helps us create great things together relies on having a well-defined mission, deciding what concrete initiative we need to take next, and picking the right associates who can help us take this step. Without these three pillars, meetings, emails, and chats can never be effective. A great agenda with no AIM is meaningless. A well-phrased email with no AIM has no value. When we define our AIM first, everything that follows is utilized to move us forward. 

In the chapter From Standalone Interactions to Communication Flows, we’ve realized why viewing communication as a series of interconnected activities and interactions is better than managing each of them in isolation. In Part 03 and Part 04, we will get familiar with the building blocks of communication flows and learn how and when to use each. Before we do that, though, this is a good opportunity to see how defining our mission and initiative and picking our associates affect our communication design. We will do that using a real-world example. While simplified, the following case study captures the thinking process we must apply and demonstrates how our AIM can be used to design communication flows. 

Let’s say we’ve realized it takes too long for new employees to become contributing team members in our organization. This problem statement can lead us in different directions. One path could focus on management skills, another on the onboarding process, and a third one might lead to improving the way we recruit employees. Eventually, we might need to explore all these directions, but for this example, let’s focus on the onboarding process. This will require quite a few activities and the collaborative work of different stakeholders. Therefore, communication must be an integral part of this project.

We start by defining the mission. While we could use the original mission “to improve the integration of new team members,” this statement lacks specificity and allows too much room for interpretation. We want the mission to serve as our lighthouse in the upcoming interactions; we want it to guide our discussions. The following mission is more focused and concrete:

To create an onboarding and training program that helps integrate new team members faster.

This mission focuses on one of the potential paths (the onboarding and training program) and also mentions why we want to improve these aspects. It is a tangible mission that will encompass multiple tasks and communication flows. At the same time, it is concrete enough to help us focus each activity and interaction and ensure they help us progress.

With this mission, we can outline a high-level plan to reach our destination: 

To create an onboarding and training program that helps integrate new team members faster, we need: 

• To define goals and objectives.
• To design the onboarding journey. 
• To develop the training content. 
• To design a mentoring system. 
• To define a feedback cycle. 

These steps are pretty standard for such a goal, and a similar list can be found in various resources. However, in some cases, breaking down the steps requires a discussion, which means we must design a preliminary communication flow to develop this plan. 

Each of the steps in this high-level plan is a potential initiative. We can have, for example, a communication flow designed to define the goals and objectives so we can create an onboarding and training plan that helps integrate new team members faster. This is a single, tangible, and achievable initiative. We can achieve it in a short time using a limited series of activities and interactions. The outcome of this communication flow is well-defined, and we can ensure that every part of the flow contributes to creating this outcome. 

Some initiatives in this plan might be too broad. They might require a long series of interactions or splitting the flow into side discussions. One way to reveal this is to list the associates we need to work with and their roles in the context of the initiative. 

Consider, for example, the initiative “to develop the training content:”

The associates who should help us develop the training content are:

• The Group Manager: Define the professional topics that must be covered and to what depth. 
• HR Representative: Define generic issues to cover. 
• Technical Leads from the group and other groups: Provide the professional material and validate the training content. 
• Instructional Designer: Design the training content.
• New Hires: Provide feedback on the current training experience (what worked well, what was missing, etc.)

Looking at this list of people, I can easily identify three finer-grained steps necessary to develop the training content. 

To develop the training content, we need: 

• To understand what works and what doesn’t in the existing training (with new hires and an Instructional Designer).
• To build the professional content (with the Group Manager, Technical Leads, and an Instructional Designer).
• To build the generic content (with an HR representative and an Instructional Designer). 

Each of these initiatives has a beginning and an end. It starts at Point A and ends at Point B, bringing us closer to our mission. At the same time, they relate to one another. The first initiative provides valuable input for the other two. Without understanding what works and what doesn’t in the current training, we wouldn’t know what to focus on. 

Separating each finer-grained initiative into its own communication flow improves effectiveness. Only the relevant people should be in the loop in each discussion. Where needed, one flow feeds the next one. Most importantly, we can ensure we achieve meaningful progress that takes us closer to realizing our mission in a relatively short time. We don’t have to wait until all of these discussions converge to know we have the tangible and meaningful result defined by each initiative in our hands. 

Of course, each of these communication flows has to be designed. We must consider which types of interactions are most effective, what preparation is required, and how to arrange the information and insights we compile and generate. These are essential aspects that can affect how well we utilize each flow; we will explore them in the following parts of the book. However, even based on this initial analysis, we now have a clear picture of the required discussions and collaborative work in this project.

Despite its resemblance to a Gantt chart, the goal of this plan is not to manage dates, durations, and resources. Instead, it lays out the logical breakdown of the mission to initiatives and communication flows. It clearly shows what things we need to discuss, with whom, and in what order (when the order is important). It evolves continuously, and we don’t necessarily need to drill into all initiatives at the outset. We can go into lower-level details when they are required. If new issues arise in the middle of the project, we will design an additional communication flow to address them. 

Communication design like this one is a thinking tool. Unlike the reactive, spontaneous interactions we often experience, when communicating with an AIM, we set the stage for meaningful interactions. We are intentful about them and consider what we need to achieve as a team. A couple of hours dedicated to planning the communication flows in our project is an investment that will save us and the team dozens and hundreds of hours of ineffective communication and possibly sub-optimal decisions. 

Does this kind of communication design hinder creativity and spontaneity? I believe the opposite is true. When we create structure, set tangible goals, and eliminate noise and waste, we create a setup where the team can focus on what’s important: co-creation. Instead of getting frustrated with fragmented and circular discussions, every minute we spend communicating has value; it has a context and a goal. Every interaction takes us closer to our joint destination: realizing our mission.