Communication & Newsletters
A collection of articles and notes about affiliate communication
updated October 06, 2006

Internal Communication Team

A suggestion for improving communication within ISM affiliates. Suggestion resulted from conversations at the ISM leadership Workshop,  June 2002.  

Seminars and workshops on communication primarily focus on communicating with the public, potential members and others outside of the organization. However, there is another important part of communicating that we cannot ignore. How we communicate with each other, other officers, members and board members can be just as critical and make a big impact on affiliate operation. Incoming information from many sources can easily be missed or fall through the cracks.

While each officer and board member makes a commitment to keep up with news and information, it's easy to get distracted by the "day job" and miss something important. I suggest you set up an Internal Communication Team to focus on capturing and distributing incoming information.

1. Have a short discussion at a board meeting to identify sources of important incoming and internal information, discuss the important aspects of each, determine who should receive, and who should act on, the information.
2. Form an Internal Communication Team. Track down a few members who might be willing to help if the task is relatively small and specific. Some of these tasks are relatively simple, easily assignable and don't take a lot of time and commitment. These would be great assignments for someone who wants to help, but can't devote a lot of time. These would also be great assignments for new members who aren't willing to make a public commitment, but can spend a little bit of time behind the scenes. Each task could probably be accomplished in approximately 1-2 hours per month.
3. Assign monitoring responsibility for each item to one of the volunteer team members. Help the monitor get set up to receive the information, understand what to look for, an idea of who to send information to and give them a tool to distribute the items they find. The task includes monitoring the source, selecting important pieces of information and notifying appropriate officers, committee chairs, board members, newsletter editor, etc.
4. Set up an email distribution list for officers and committee chairs. Include everyone on the list who might be interested in keeping up with the latest news. Have a member who uses Outlook or another high-end mail program set up and maintain the list. Messages needing to be distributed to everyone can be sent to the one mail list coordinator who then re-distributes to the list. Use a standard, easily identifiable subject line so everyone knows the message is not spam.

Here are some specific Monitor Task suggestions:

1. Monitor task; Working Calendar. Assign one member to set up and maintain a revolving calendar. A simple table in Word, Excel or something similar will do. Every officer, committee chair or monitor forwards calendar items to the "calendar keeper" who then distributes the updated calendar on a regular basis. Don't forget calendar items such as deadlines for registration or ISM educational events. Distribute to everyone, each time there is an update. Don't forget to monitor the ISM calendar of events on line. (www.ism.ws/AboutISM/Calendar.cfm)
2. Monitor task: ISM NEWSLine. Publication contains news, educational subjects, certification updates and other important information from ISM. Each issue should be reviewed and items of interest highlighted in an email to appropriate committee chair or officers. Identify potential cutouts for affiliate newsletter. This would be a great task for a past president or retired board member. (www.ism.ws/MembersOnly/Newsline/index.cfm) 
3. Monitor Task; ISM web site. The ISM web site includes news, articles, calendar items, notifications, posting of educational events, publications, etc.. Assign a monitor to spend 30 minutes each week reviewing the ISM web site for new and updated items. (www.ism.ws)
4. Monitor Task; ISM Certification Update News. Electronic newsletter distributed to members who sign up for the list. Includes topics relating to C.P.M. and A.P.P. Review and forward articles to the newsletter editor for publication and/or to the Education Chair for action. (www.ism.ws/CertUpdates/)
5. Monitor Task; Just in ETime. Electronic newsletter distributed to members who sign up for the list. Concise summary of newsworthy information from ISM. (www.ism.ws/AboutISM/JustinEtimeSignup.cfm)
6. Monitor task; Inside Supply Management. ISM Magazine distributed to all members, which includes articles, education and calendar items. Probably a big enough task to assign to two or three monitors. Might consider splitting the responsibility by topic or subject. (www.ism.ws/Pubs/ISMMag/index.cfm)
7. Monitor Task, ISM Board and Affiliate Support Council meeting minutes. (www.ism.ws/MembersOnly/MinutesReports/Index.cfm)

Add any additional sources of information to the list. The purpose of this plan is not to relieve officers or committee chairs of their responsibility but to assist and remind them about important information.

Mike.

P.S. I would also suggest you have the monitors get in the habit of copying important information directly to the newsletter editor. It has been my experience that sometimes committee chairs learn important facts, but forget that others in the affiliate may not have been on distribution or involved in the discussion.

Does our Newsletter Add Value?

What purpose does your affiliate newsletter serve? What do you want from your affiliate newsletter? News letters are often cited as one of the ways that the local affiliate adds value to membership, but the format, content and distribution remains the same, year after year. Affiliate officers spend quite a bit of time working on newsletters, but after all that, do we as members feel like the newsletter is worth reading? 

If you aren't getting what you want from your affiliate newsletter, maybe it's time to talk with your officers about newsletter content. Here are some discussion topics and ideas.

• Is the newsletter primarily just a notice about the next monthly program? If so, can it be shorter (and easier to read), more frequent (e.g.. 2 reminders each month instead of one) and distributed by email? If this is the primary purpose why would you ever delay the newsletter deadline for any other reason? Maybe program notices should be separate from the educational newsletter.

• Does the newsletter include the latest activities of your affiliate offices and Board members? People often say they don't know what's going on, but I know many officers who agonize over newsletter articles each month. I think officer articles should be more succinct and written like a business report instead of a college essay.  I like short bullets instead of long sentences. Also, why waste so much space and effort to make it an historical archive or make it cute?  

• If the newsletter is supposed to be helpful to business professionals, does it include information about local Supply Chain Educational opportunities (no matter who is offering them). I know of at least 2 people educators  in our region involved with Supply Chain education who would appreciate the venue for publicizing educational opportunities.

• (Jerry Baker, Shoreline Community College

• Lee Buddress; Portland State)

• If the newsletter is supposed to be a resource for business professionals, why not add tools and information that they can use? There is an abundance of information available that can be cut and pasted into a newsletters.  Articles, useful web sites resources, and tidbits are all fair game. [Every resource I've referenced in this newsletter could yield many professional development articles]. 

• Cut and paste from the ISM Newsline, and synopsize ISM publications, reference articles and links from other affiliate web sites,  Many professional web sites or consultants will authorize the use of,  or provide, articles for newsletters (mine for example). Suggest your newsletter editor drop a line to consultants, or organizations and ask them if they offer articles or news notices. You'll get more than you could ever post.

• Remember that only a relatively few people may have seen or it before so repetition of important information is a good thing. 

• How about having a contest like this among affiliate members.  Send your most useful purchasing link to the newsletter editor. Each month we'll publish one and the person who submitted gets first in line for that month's meal.

MLTWEB is assembled and maintained by Michael L. Taylor, C.P.M. Mail: Materials and articles prepared by Mike may be shared for supply chain education, provided that this source is credited and no fee is charged. The rights for any other use are withheld. Copyright;  Michael L. Taylor, C.P.M. 1996-2009