Kitchen Junk Drawers

Organizing My Kitchen Junk Drawer: Lessons in Internal Communication

Aug 19, 13 | 12:06 am 

By feature writer Kate Berg

I opened the scariest drawer in my kitchen the other day…you know the one that you just toss everything into and promise yourself that you are going to take the time to clean it out and organize it the next time. As I was hunting for the chip clip, I realized that if I treated this draw like the rest of my house that everyone sees that I would have quickly located what I needed. An organization’s internal communication can be much the same way as that drawer in my kitchen. We carefully craft and design our marketing communications, but all too often we just toss our internal communication out to our team members and promise ourselves some day we will take the time to develop a better strategy.

From my kitchen’s junk drawer and the principles used in marketing communication, we can learn three important lessons:

• Toss out the junk — When we organize our marketing communications or our junk drawers, we first decide who our target audience is. We need to do the same thing with internal communications. If communication’s subject just pertains to team members working on accounts payable and receivable, create a communication targeted just for them. This helps both team members of the targeted message recognized the message pertains to them as well as helping team members who don’t receive the message by not filling up their inbox with unnecessary communications.
• Sort the stuff — In marketing communications, we not only consider the audience, but we also develop objectives for a communication. Having an objective for a communication, helps us focus the message. An objective also helps us measure the effectiveness of a communication whether it is having team member change the steps in a process or take advantage of a new tool.
• Develop an organization system — Marketing communications are carefully developed with graphics, fonts and colors all used to organize messages and catch your audience’s attention. Our internal messages need the same time and care in their development. The right use of fonts and colors can send your audience a quick message about the importance of the message. Graphics can also be used to help draw attention to important messages.

From organizing my junk drawer to our internal communication, using the fundamental principles of marketing communications can strengthen and enhance the messages to our internal audiences making them more effective.

Reprinted with permission of