Maybe it’s because I’m a Nebraskan, but fall sports season is my favorite. Volleyball, football and a little hockey sprinkled in? That’s how we spend weekends at our house.
I’m a fairly casual observer. I can’t tell you much about different formations, plays or strategies, but I can tell you one thing that’s glaringly obvious to me every time: miscommunication. The mistakes that happen when a player isn’t sure of their role or misses an assignment.
Dropped balls. Missed defensive assignments. Wrong routes.
They’re all unforced errors that give the competition an advantage without requiring them to do much of anything.
The same thing happens on communications teams. A task on a project doesn’t get assigned. Assumptions are made that everyone understands the plan. There’s a belief that everyone knows their role.
Except, many times, they don’t.
Here are three reasons this might be happening and how to course-correct.
1. You don’t want to be too prescriptive as a leader.
No one wants to be a micromanager, so you might hesitate to give too many instructions. You want a culture that feels collaborative and where everyone can lead. But there’s a difference between micromanagement and the gift of clarity.
Your team wants to understand expectations and responsibilities. You don’t have to tell people exactly how to get to the end goal, but you do need to make sure they know what they’re responsible for to get the project across the finish line and what that finished product needs to achieve.
That clarity creates a healthier work environment. Team members understand what they’re accountable for. Stress is reduced because there are fewer fire drills when something gets missed and everyone has to scramble. Less work has to be redone because expectations and responsibilities were clear from the beginning.
2. You need stronger project management practices.
Great work doesn't happen by accident, and you can't leave important details to chance.
I know. It often feels like there's never enough time to enter everything into the project management system, build out a spreadsheet or make sure everyone is actually using those tools (I’m guilty of getting behind on these, too).
But writing things down helps ensure every task gets captured and assigned. It also gives you a better opportunity to spot what's missing before it becomes a problem.
Hoping everyone remembers every to-do item from the last meeting, or can keep track of the cascade of tasks that comes from those original assignments, is setting your team up to miss something important.
A little time spent documenting the plan upfront can save a lot of time spent fixing mistakes later.
3. Job descriptions are unclear or outdated.
Maybe you built your team several years ago, but the work has changed. New responsibilities have emerged that don't clearly belong to anyone's role. Other tasks may need to move to someone else. Someone on your team might be carrying significantly more responsibility than their position or compensation reflects.
It's worth taking a step back to evaluate whether your current roles still make sense. Are responsibilities clearly defined? Are there gaps or overlaps? Does everyone's job description reflect the work they're actually doing?
It might be time to sit down with HR and revisit what each position is responsible for.
There are plenty of things we can't control, but role clarity isn't one of them. It's something we can build into how we lead and work together. It’s one less unforced error keeping us from winning the game.