Many thanks. I work in the commercialization department of an healthcare company. I work with a team in charge of managing clinical experts activities and that organizes internal mini-events and congresses with those experts (experts are paid by my company to provide value). My problem: the experts activities team often sollocits my team to contribute to their events, by asking my team to present things, to create content, to be present, without having a clear specific business goal in mind. I've noticed that very often, this expert activities team does not have a clear objective and purpose for their activties, and they just organize stuff with the experts coz they are asked to do so. What do you think?
Thank you for your question. You have a friction point I’ve been told about many times. The key issue is that your cross functional colleagues want your team to do tasks and you are balancing the challenge of making sure your team stay focused on the highest priority work. These do not always balance. My advice would be As in the video identify your the key stakeholders. When the objectives are unclear ask questions to identify what the outcome is they want. Often people can be prescriptive in how they want something done, for example I want a PowerPoint presentation with this, that and the other, can you create a graph etc without thinking it through to define the specific objective/outcome or understanding how much work is involved in doing this. Ask questions to understand the scope of the request why do they need it, how Will it be used, for who, when etc. what you can often find is that there is a simpler and more efficient way of doing this for you rather than the prescriptive way they describe. You should also be able to spot repeats where a simpler tool/template could do the job for them. You will also be able to ask questions about priorities - which project/task is the most important. This gives you the scope to say no or offer a simpler solution that will not take as much time for the lower priority work, and deliver the high priority work well and on time. Create a shared spreadsheet or doc that shows the current workload so that it is transparent what is coming through, this transparency reduces surprises. From experience sitting and chatting this issue through, coming up with a plan that addresses your stakeholder requirements and then reviewing regularly means that you have the conversation at the right time. Make sure your team are aware of and aligned so that no work creeps in under the radar. I hope this helps. Let me know how you get on, H
