Hey there, I'm Devin!
Most of the time you can catch me deep in the world of internal comms at Workshop (yes, the Happy Mondays folks!), and while I love AI, there are just some comms questions that need a human who really gets it… that’s me!
Devin, I’ve been a team of one in internal comms for two years, and I just found out I’m getting a direct report. I’m thrilled, but also a little panicked — I’ve never managed anyone before, and honestly, a lot of my “systems” exist only in my head. I don’t want to just hand someone a pile of tasks; I want to actually build something sustainable. How do you go from lone wolf IC practitioner to someone who leads a team — without everything falling apart in the transition?
Congrats!! And I want to offer something that I hope is a little reassuring: the fact that you’re already thinking about this the way you are tells me everything is going to be just fine.
Here’s the thing about all those systems that live in your head — getting them out is honestly not as scary as it sounds. I actually went through a version of this recently when I was preparing to be out for a couple of weeks. I used an AI tool called Wisper, just talked through my process out loud, and it basically created a how-to guide for the person covering for me. First I do this, then I do this, here’s where to find that. You don’t have to sit down and type it all out in a structured document — just talk through it. AI can do the heavy lifting of turning it into something clean and usable. Start there, with the repetitive stuff you do on autopilot, and you’ll be surprised how much you actually know.
For the more collaborative pieces (figuring out who owns what, how you hand things off, what you keep versus what becomes theirs) our CMO Jamie actually shared a framework I love: watch me do it, then we do it together, then I watch you do it. It’s a simple progression, but it takes so much pressure off the transition. Nothing has to flip overnight.
From there, stay open to what your new direct report brings! One of the coolest parts of adding someone to the team is that they’ll see things you’ve been too close to notice. You might have done something a certain way for two years, and they’ll come in with a fresh angle that makes it even better. That’s not a threat to what you’ve built — that’s the whole point. Internal comms should grow and evolve alongside the company, and now you’ve got a partner to do that with. Congrats again!!
