A post by Jeff Jarvis confirms my belief that focussing on a few things and doing them really well is the way to help teams grapple with change.
The context here is the changing media. My team is currently trying to do new things - some we do well, some we don't do so well - as we change as a media provider.
With different people doing different things it can be hard to focus the team on who is doing what - and recognition for successes can be patchy. And failure to be recognised can be disengaging.
Unite the team on one project however and it becomes easier to share the experience and success.
Our coverage (I know, this is not how Jeff Jarvis would have it) from the Institute of Travel and Tourism conference in Cyprus involved the team in producing TV, news, email news alerts, text alerts, live blogging, podcasts and a daily print product.
This was the first time we had done such a thing and it worked well in a) showing the team how we can work online and b) demonstrating what a good job we could do (I mean that).
So, as the media changes we need to focus on the things we can do well - there are lots of ways to automate what we do - aggregation etc. It can be disheartening to work on things that get poor traffic and little recognition.
The upshot for editorial people is that they need to become project managers so that they own an initiiative and see it through to agreed goals.