Advertising is an effective way to spread information. It gives you (the
advertiser) control over what message you want to send. It also gives you
control over who receives your message. One advertisement can reach thousands
of people, way more effective than talking to each one of these persons personally.
In your organization, who know about your project? Do you and your team
sometimes feel like no knows or even cares about your project - that is, unless
it's late or it's having problems? Do you sometimes feel like the person in the
office next to you has no idea what you're working on?
Often, these situations are caused by the fact that everyone reports up the
chain of command, but there is not process for communicating with your peers.
Taking time to tell your colleagues about your project can be seen as a waste
of time - you could be working on your project instead of just talking.
However, who else but your peers can understand what you are working on, the
challenges you are meeting head-on and the feeling of accomplishment when you
finally fix that bug you were hunting down?
As a project manager and as a team leader, it is your responsibility to give
your project visibility inside the organization. It's simply internal
marketing. It can be as simple as a weekly email with a summary of what's been
done and kudos to the team members for their good deeds. It can be a simply
sheet tacked to the kitchen billboard. You can also make it more elaborate,
with a monthly lunch event or happy hour. It really depends on the
organization's culture and energy. What's important is that everyone on your
department, and even the whole organization, knows what's going on with the
project.
Imagine IT taking the time to tell you about their latest server upgrades,
and the challengers they overcame? If you knew more about their day, you
would understand how much work it takes to make everything run smoothly.
Because they usually don't advertise about their job, they are a mysterious
bunch, and it's hard to know what their day is made of.
The same goes with your project. Wouldn't you team feel better about the
project if they felt it was important enough to be talked about by the whole
organization?