Create a communication plan in three steps

Writing a communication plan can seem a daunting task, however this article describes a simple method that breaks it down into three simple steps: use themes to describe the communication approach, identify constraints to communication activities and adapt communication activities and their scheduled dates to your audience.

In change programmes, significant effort is often placed on enabling system and processes, while communication is dealt marginally. This can cause large problems if information is not readily available to the communications team, as key messages refer to future processes or project milestones (such as old processes’ cutover dates). Although the example described is within a project management context, this methodology can also be used to schedule other types of communication activity, such as targeted marketing campaigns.

I’ll start describing the work environment where this method was developed: Once the first days of my onboarding into a large Merger and Acquisition (M&A) programme were over, I was handed over a tentative communication plan which displayed a succession of communications. Although it was formatted on a standard grid -see table below-, there was no clear flow.

Therefore, I decided to step back and uncover any theme that revealed the underlying communication strategy. Fortunately, on the inherited communication plan there was a clear understanding of the main three inputs:

1. Goals and audience. This covers what needs to be done and why. The audience could be both company staff involved in the new processes and external parties.

2. Key messages. Main points that each audience group needs to know.

3. Appropriate channels and tools. Choosing appropriate channels to deliver the message to each audience.

The following four themes surfaced to facilitate storytelling of how the change programme was planned:

1. Awareness: Influential leaders will provide a high-level overview of the change and its rationale

2. Action: The audience was provided unambiguous and actionable instructions, as they were required to perform some activities ahead of the project go-live

3. Readiness: Users were requested to attend training on the new system and business processes

4. Adoption: Both during go-live and subsequent weeks, users and external parties were made aware of the change (both in terms of new systems and processes) and support to ensure adoption (further training and hyper care processes).

The story was so compelling that various senior members embraced it as their own. This clear though process was used to define the scope of communications and reject details that were not aligned to these themes as they could distract the audience. These themes helped me, as well, to align the specific communication activities to a timeline, which constituted a draft communication plan from which to calculate a budget. The budget confirmed that the plan could be executed with the available resources. This initial step proved invaluable as it laid the foundations to progress with the two next steps.

Before the plan could be communicated to senior programme stakeholders, the schedule had to accommodate two types of constraints:

1. Dependencies. I club together in this group physical dependencies (who will deliver the message to whom) and parts of the key message content which are developed as the programme matures.

2. Public holidays and company drumbeat. These two time constraints capture suitable days to engage with the audience.

Each communication activity can be apprehended as having four types of dependency if it was to be managed independently of other communications (this simplistic approach is unlikely to be blindly adopted by an experienced communication professional, as it is only part of the overall communication plan):

1. Sender: person that is best placed to initiate the message.

2. Distribution list: contact details that allow to reach to every member of the audience.

3. Content: this is where the key messages are addressed to the audience.

4. Approval: as messages are sent on behalf of the sender or change leadership, they need to be comfortable with them.

Finding a suitable sender and obtaining approval from this person and other required approvers (such as programme sponsor, programme director…) may involve considerable effort and should be planned with sufficient leeway, so it does not impact the timing of the communication.

Distribution list of the audience in a merger context can be time consuming, especially during the first months of integration, where employees find their way into the new organization structure or leave.

Finally, content dependencies can range from discrete pieces of information, such as deadlines, places… to lengthier materials, such as business processes that describe how to interact with the new system.

Inherent to scheduling tasks on a calendar is to consider the public holidays of the various countries engaged in the change programme (both programme office location(s) and where the change is implemented). Additionally, it is advisable to grasp the audience work patterns, and schedule communications when they are more likely to be noticed. As an example of days to avoid, Mondays can be very busy as people plan their week’s work or Friday afternoon’s email may be buried in the Inbox as staff get out of work early.

Adopting a deterministic approach, i.e. scheduling solely on these “hard” dependencies is likely not to produce the desired impactful result. Flexibility will demand the communication manager to adapt both communication activities and dates, to ensure a good fit to the audience environment. Notwithstanding, the deterministic model can be used to keep in mind all the constraints whilst modifying the number of communication activities and dates. For example, if the timeline is shortened, some key messages will be merged into the same communication and the number of reminders will decrease. A graphical representation of how this method should be applied, starting at the centre of it, is shown below:

Last but not least, it is highly advisable to incorporate a feedback cycle, so you can measure how successful your communication was, reuse what worked well and review how gaps could have been addressed.

Large transformation programmes, merger and acquisition activity or targeted marketing campaigns require careful planning to ensure audiences are timely engaged.

An effective plan is not a collection of independently crafted communication activities, but the result of careful management of your audience reality and programme progress. Both are complex in nature, so effective communications require crafty tailoring relevant details from them.

To conclude, the communication strategy will facilitate the arrangement of the plan, which can then be modelled to visualize its constraints, before the communications are tailored to the audience. On delivery, you should engage with them to evaluate the impact of the communications to improve future initiatives.

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