Communication Planning for the WIN!

A couple of months ago, I did an informal social media survey to see what topic my audience would rather learn more about: communication planning or overcoming employee resistance. I was fairly certain that overcoming employee resistance would be the topic that would receive the votes. When talking about change management overcoming employee resistance is a big topic of concern, right?

WRONG! Overwhelmingly, the survey response came back as wanting to learn more about communication planning! Okay, I hear you! So, while communication is not the first “step” in change management, I am going to start here because it is a foundational topic for change management, leadership, human relationships, and well, life! Now I will not be able to solve any relationship issues, but I can provide some insight into the foundations of communication planning. Let’s start at the beginning.

WHAT is communication planning?

You may have participated in strategic planning sessions in your organization. During which, the leaders of the organization essentially identify the direction in which the organization will grow. By identifying and sharing these organizational goals, each leader can create structured objectives for their individual teams and can begin to cascade the larger goals down and create “right” sized goals for each level of employee. This breaking down of large organizational goals into smaller, actionable steps help everyone in the organization understand how their work can tie into the organizational strategic objectives set by the executives. This always makes me think of a dad joke, “How do you eat an elephant?” The answer is, “One BITE at a time.” Take those big goals and break them down into smaller, achievable steps.

Envision a communication plan as the same type of cascade as the organizational goal being broken into manageable objectives for each part of the team. The first objective in creating a communication plan is to clearly define the overall objective of the plan. Once the objective is defined, support that objective by defining the value bets (think supporting pillars). These value bets are what the organization is hoping to achieve by making the overarching change. It may be measured in efficiency, revenue growth, employee retention or any number of other metrics. And while defining these value bets does not seem like they are a part of the communication plan, it is definitely some of the most important pre-work that can be done. When creating value bets consider structuring them as you would a SMART goal (see HERE for additional information on SMART goals). By having the value bets outlined with this level of definition and structure, it will make building out the communication plan much easier.

Audience, Channels, Sender and Tone

Once you have solid definition of the overarching objective for the communication plan, you will want to consider a few other factors such as your audience for the communications, the communication channels, the sender, and the tone. Personally, I like thinking through these four areas before I start building the plan itself. It helps me think about which communication channels and tone will work best for which audiences. The same is true for who will be delivering the message.

When I worked for a veterinary hospital organization, I quickly learned that when my audience was the veterinarians, the most impactful communication would be delivered by our Chief Medical Officer. One note to remember, just because the communication from the Chief Medical Officer carried the most weight for my veterinarian audience, I did not want to “overuse” that channel. First, the CMO did not have the time to support ongoing regular communications, AND I wanted to maintain the level of importance that came with the distribution of a message from this office.

When selecting the delivery channel, know your audience. This is truer than ever. I used to default to email for most communications, however many people are using email less for important communications, so be sure to ask team leaders how they communicate important information. I will never forget when I was working with a materials company and we needed to communicate with the transportation team. This team did not work on computers as a routine part of their job. They spent most of their time loading and hauling heavy loads to and from different locations. When I asked the leaders how to communicate with the team, they suggested we use texts and they had systems to facilitate that distribution! Talk about having to be brief in your communication!

When I am thinking about what tone to strike for my communications, I recognize the different communication channels, the content of the message, the audience, the sender, and the feeling in the project or initiative. There is a time and place for a serious executive communication in a project – say when the overarching objective of the change is being presented broadly across the organization. There is also a time for some light hearted communication. Very early in my career, I was working with a team that was doing a system implementation and I will never forget how well a communication went over that was poking fun at the level of stress that everyone was experiencing. We produced squeeze toys shaped like computers (the old school kind with diode monitors – so there was actually something to squeeze) and on the screen was printed, “Conversion Happens”. It was accompanied by posters that promoted taking care of yourself through this time, so serious message delivered in a fun way.

Communication Plans Start BIG

When it comes to building the communication plan itself, it is important to think through the timing of the change itself and map the milestones of the project with communications. I know that sounds completely nebulous. Stick with me – I like to start big for a few reasons. People really do not like surprises (unless it is in the form of a very nice gift or a party) and especially at work. I want to give them as much notice of a change as possible. The first several communications are high level and broad. Think “Something New is Coming” type of communication. By doing this people have a way to create structure and associate future communications with this overarching messaging. Humans’ brains like to create shortcuts and have place to “file” information. Using this analogy, we want to create the file folder (with an overarching label) first and then begin to add information to the file. As the project progresses, you want to begin to provide more detailed information AND deliver it to the appropriate audience. An example might be, your finance team does not want to learn about tactical inventory management, they want to learn about the OUTPUT of inventory management that will be applicable to their specific jobs.

As the plan is built, you will want to add more detail and context to each following communication. Also remember that an adult needs to hear information roughly seven times before they absorb and understand it. That does not mean you need to send out EVERY communication seven times but think about using your channels wisely. Announcements in meetings, posters, newsletters, screen savers, log in messages and many others can serve as communication channels that can support meaningful messaging.

Moving from Vision to Plan

My planning method is to whiteboard the plan prior to building the functional plan. I write the overarching objective and value bets out so that I am constantly referring back to them for messaging language. I draw (yes, I do this on a literal white board with dry erase markers) and inverted triangle and put the objective at the top, and then add in project milestones and the appropriate communications alongside. Then I go back and fill in the messages that I can communicate to help my audience navigate from one project milestone to another. How can I leverage communications to build that bridge to support everyone as they navigate the change.

I sincerely hope this discussion around communication planning has been useful. I have also created a communication plan template if you are interested in leveraging it as you begin to plan out your communication plan. Please comment below and share your tips and tricks! What do you do that works for you?

Thank you for joining me!

Christy

#communicationplan #leadership #changemanagement #leadership