Review your Company's Communications

We all know that attending meetings can take up a lot of our time and that often we don't seem to have enough time during the day to prepare properly for all of these meetings. If you are increasingly finding that you are taking paperwork home to read or comment on because day time activites are overloaded then it is probably time to review your internal communications. Most organisations have a pattern to them that we often ignore or just don't recognise. This pattern detemines many of the meetings that need to take place. Think about it; near the year end, budgets need to be prepared and analysed. Planning strategic objectives is normally an annual event and is closely linked to budget setting. Other activities such as performance reviews tend to pop up on a regular six month cycle and project and team meetings will be more frequent.
So now we begin to see a pattern of communication emerge. Look further and consider e-mail, telephone and other regular contact such as visual displays (notice boards, white boards etc) and a multi layer approach to communication starts to emerge. Mapping out these communications and prioritising those you need to participate in will help control your time and your diary. Once you have mapped out and prioritised your overall communications you can then begin to rationalise and focus your approach.
Make sure you think about why the meeting/communication is needed, how frequent this needs to be, the style (formal/informal)of communication and the audience - who should be involved. Once you have mapped this out your diary will only be filled with the things you really need to do and you can take back some time to yourself!