What’s your favorite job title?
Old school titles such as chief executive officer, sales manager, account executive, associate?
How about the new world: Master of experiences, grand master of underlings, wizard of light bulb moments, beverage dissemination officer?
We put a lot of stake in job titles. In the end, we all know that your title doesn’t really matter, it’s what you do with it.
I’ve been talking about communication the past couple weeks. Today let’s focus on titles.
First step? If you want to communicate vision and expectations to coworkers, throw away your current title and replace it with this new one.
Chief Reminding Officer. You are now the CRO.
Why do I say that?
Because of this phrase: “I already told them that.”
It’s nearly universal when we start working with companies at FiveFour. Leaders often think that if they tell their teams something once, that it will be enough. That it’s immediately policy and it will carried out as such.
It seems silly when I say it that way but it’s true. We think that once is enough.
It’s not. Business leaders must be the CRO. They need to continually reinforce the message, whether it’s relaying the company’s big vision or reminding what is (or isn’t) accepted behavior. A solid company culture can guide workers through difficult situations and times.
But culture isn’t a sealed bubble. It’s more like fine fabric. There’s always going to be some air and water slipping through.
A consistent message keeps your fabric strong.
Now, being the CRO doesn’t mean standing there chirping in everybody’s ear all day. Nobody wants that and leaders don’t have time for it.
Which leads me to, “We already did that.” We hear this phrase used in reference to training programs or company culture exercises.
And it’s usually true. You probably have done that, or some version of it. How many of you have had staff retreats to define company culture or build the team or learn communication skills?
Yeah, we’ve all done that.
The problem is that it doesn’t stick.
We have a saying at FiveFour: Training isn’t something you did, it’s something you do.
You’re never done building your skills, getting better at communication, sales, management and leadership. We give companies the tools to come back to the core message again and again so it’s not lost to the dim mists of history.
Repetition is the mother of mastery.
It takes communication to keep the message fresh. That’s the job of the CRO. That’s you.