Do You Have the Master Plan?
Now that we’ve laid out some of the important pillars behind communication throughout the earlier episodes of this series– let’s get down to business! How does one actually apply these learnings to create a communications plan?
You might think creating guidelines for the way your organization and its components communicate is overkill, or may even make things awkward or inefficient. Rather than forcing unrealistic guidelines and processes on your team, to create a proper communications plan is to consider the most efficient and therefore comfortable ways of getting information to the right places at the right times.
Framed that way, it’s actually about eliminating that awkwardness and inefficiency before it arises, and adapting between what works and does not work overtime! Now you might ask yourself, “how does one go about doing that?”
In this episode, we break down…
- What is a communications plan? What’s included in it and why is it important?
- Why does my team need a communications plan? Can’t we just figure it out as we get to know each other and form a workflow? (Spoiler alert: Bad idea!)
- The importance of selecting communications channels and how to set specific guidelines for each.
- What are the benefits? What will the return on investment be from my time spent creating this plan?
- How does one build a communications plan? How do you craft guidelines that are easily followable for team members and relevant stakeholders?
Key Quotes & Conclusions…
- “Your communications plan should really be your one-stop shop for your project communication strategy. What communication channels should we use, and how should we use these channels?”
- “This is definitely not a PR Strategy. This is not about social media, identifying your target audience, or key messages. This is where we are documenting guidance on how we communicate with the project team on certain details and project status updates to stakeholders like our clients, customers, and contractors.”
- “This is about communicating the right information, to the right stakeholders, at the right time. Not everyone has to be notified of all the details. So you have to decide, depending on the scenario, who needs to be on the conference call and who doesn’t.”
- “All of this has three central components: the people, the process and the technology.”
- “Even if you’re a new team and you’re just getting to know each other– I think just putting out the do’s and dont’s of communication is great. This is a perfect opportunity because you’re just learning about each other.”
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