This afternoon I observed a conversation between a business owner and an employee. The conversation centered on updates, taskers, and what is expected.

At a high level these are covered in a job description. A job description covers these in detail, but what about organizationally and day-to-day?

Roles/ Responsibilities

Often we see roles/ responsibilities early on before applying but what tools are avail once the employee (or subordinates) are in place and how do you keep the updates clear, concise, measurable and informative?

On active duty at Dover AFB the commander’s briefing centered on a briefing quadrant. It looked like this and were held regularly.

Reporting Quadrant:

- __________|__________
            |
- Top left: Working on now
- Top right: Working on next few
- Bottom left: Next few months
- Bottom right: What is keeping me up at night

The briefing tool is designed to be interactive, including:

  • Few bullet items per quadrant, one slide total
  • Quantitive and qualitative data points, descriptions
  • What’s on the burner now and where is our attention going
  • Provides team members opportunity to engage, discover and troubleshoot
  • Everyone in the briefing room learns quickly
  • The senior or owner adds value on the last quadrant by un-bottlenecking issues which builds further momentum

The key is to make updates informative, organized and provide an opportunity to discover bottlenecks. Entrepreneurs and business owners have the most influence here. This is where they should live the most and pays the most dividends.

#briefings #updates #valueadd

David Molina is an American entrepreneur, founder, and blogger. A son of Mexican immigrants, a former farm worker and high school drop-out, he went on to be the first in his family to attend and graduate from a university and earn an Officer Commission in Infantry. Molina has been a founder, co-founder and launched a wide range of companies and organizations including a veterans nonprofit, featured in multiple news outlets including The Bend Bulletin, Portland Business Journal, Univision KUNP-TV, Humans of Tech, and The Seattle Times.