You're drowning in tasks for Corporate Communications. How do you ensure you meet all deadlines effectively?

By prioritizing tasks, you ensure smooth sailing through your sea of deadlines, keeping everything shipshape and on course. - Tackle urgent and important tasks first, like a doctor in an ER. Deadlines are your patients; save the critical ones first. - Create a to-do list and rank tasks by importance, impact, and urgency. If there's one thing that I have learnt from Cal Newport's book 'Deep Work' it is this - Identify tasks that require focus and have a significant impact on your goals. Prioritize these tasks on your to-do list. - Pass on tasks to team members best suited for them. You're the captain, not the whole crew!

Say ‘no’ to tasks. Whenever a task comes your way, don’t accept it until you know how it fits into the business strategy and MarCom strategy. Once accepted, evaluate if it comes in addition to your current task list or if it needs to push something off your list.

Using tools like Microsoft Loop can help you breaking the tasks into smaller ones, delegating by assigning a responsible person with deadlines. The tool will take care of communicating to your the team member responsible for the task and send reminders prior to the due dates. It will take you some time at the beginning to organize it, but once it is set up it will optimize your time.

Plan your slack time - ca 20%. No one can work at max capacity, full speed ahead, for an extended period without ending up with burnout. Slack time is not unproductive - it’s the necessary foundation for being productive. It’s the time that enables you to breath, think, evaluate, grow; it’s also the time that enables you to speed up when something truly urgent lands on your table.

Spend time getting to know your team, understand their strengths and improvement opportunities. This will allow you to know exactly where you can delegate certain tasks and increase productivity.

As an accountability coach,I feel the urge to add a little twist. Think of deadlines as plot points in your Corporate Communications story. Each task is a chapter that moves your narrative forward. Start with a 'storyboard' – a visual timeline of your tasks. This helps keep deadlines front and center and also shows how each task connects to your overall goals. Embrace tools like Trello or Asana for this. It's like having a storyboard for a movie, making your workflow cinematic and engaging.

Use platforms like Trello or Asana to break down large tasks into bite-sized pieces, prioritize effectively, and keep track of deadlines. I recommend integrating a fun, gamified approach. Set small rewards for yourself or your team as you complete milestones. This keeps the motivation high and the process enjoyable.

Sometimes, even when you've prioritized, planned, communicated, said no, been flexible and used tools ...there's too much work. Maybe you're understaffed due to consolidation/growth but your department hasn't grown accordingly. When a new task comes, let them know you'll have to outsource it, get a freelance estimate, and maybe someone will decide it's not that urgent. Or, go to the "powers that be" and say, "We can not do all of this, tell me what you're willing to pay to outsource, or what we can take off the list?" Get a freelance budget. Keep track of freelance expenses as ammunition to hire another person.