Go with the Flow

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It’s a terrible, terrible pun, and I’m sorry I made it.

But sometimes a cliché is overused because it’s apt.
 
Going with the flow in this case means going with the flowchart. Like an editorial calendar, a flowchart is a surprisingly integral, useful tool for coordinating communications. It gives both a bird’s-eye view of and a step-by-step guide for a variety of processes.
 
Flowcharts are incredibly useful, totally illuminating, and delightfully easy to make, but they aren’t used very often.
 
Maybe it’s because, as with the editorial calendar, they feel unnecessary. Or obvious. Or intuitive. Or irrelevant.
 
But flowcharts shouldn’t be taken for granted. They should be considered a valuable addition to organizational (or communications-specific) agendas.

We recently created a flowchart to help us help a recent client. We needed the chart to better understand our client’s workflow—who produced what, when, and for whom?—but we saw that our client would also benefit from the chart’s big-picture sequencing of their communications protocol.
 
Flowcharts are obviously useful when integrating new efforts—like new touch points—into current communications processes. But they’re also useful for new hires, who need every tool at their disposal to get up to speed, and for workhorse veterans, whose knowledge base is often locked up inside the professional experience that manifests as intuition.
 
Ultimately, flowcharts clarify processes, make information accessible and distributable, and contribute to departmental and even organization-wide efficiency.

So (again, I’m sorry), go with the flow!