A large part of a manager's work is the management of information - making sure that people receive the information they need and that incoming information is sent to the appropriate people in a timely manner. Managing the information flow effectively is the first step toward improving coordination within your program.

In the course of a working day, a manager will receive information, produce new information, and transmit all or some portion of this information to others. Some of this information comes through relatively formal channels, such as reports, official letters and documents, and other more personal and informal channels, such as meetings, telephone conversations, or a passing remark in the office, clinic, or corridor. As a manager, you must constantly evaluate the importance of the information you receive and determine who else needs to be informed. These are the critical first steps towards effective program coordination. Your success as a manager, and the success of the program you manage, depend on your ability to ensure that pertinent information is provided to the appropriate people in a timely manner. These people may be within your own organization or working for other organizations.

By reflecting on the questions below, you will begin to see a picture of the persons and groups with whom you should be sharing information and coordinating activities. Over time, it will be clear which people need to receive which types of information. For example, every time you receive information pertaining to contraceptive logistics, you know that the same group of people needs to be informed. This group therefore plays a key role in program coordination with respect to contraceptive logistics. If contraceptive logistics is a key concern in your program, you may wish to give formal recognition to the group's role by shaping it into a committee or task force for coordination.

Example from Bolivia - Example of a Routing Slip

An organization or department should make sure that its own activities are well coordinated before launching a major external effort. Internal coordination is easier to carry out than coordination between organizations, due to the presence of a single formal authority structure. All too often, however, organizations become fragmented. Each person or unit focuses on one activity or set of activities, and losses sight of what others are doing. The bigger and busier the organization is, the greater the risk of fragmentation. Unless mechanisms are put into place to assure internal coordination, this pattern of isolated activity can become institutionalized and lead to organizational inefficiencies. It is important that people and units see the "big picture" of the organization, in order to relate with the external environment in a realistic and successful way.

Tools and Techniques - You Need to Improve Coordination When ...

It is important for all managers, no matter what their roles and responsibilities in the organization, to see the "big picture" and understand how all the organization's components interact. Use the matrix in Coordinating the Activities of Different Departments to find some of the more common coordination issues and activities relevant to your own job and responsibilities. You may even want to fill out this matrix yourself, in order to identify the coordination issues and activities most important to your own situation.

To use the matrix, find your area of responsibility on the vertical axis and follow it across the page to read how it interacts with other functional areas within the organization.

Tools and Techniques - Coordinating the Activities of Different Departments