August 21, 2006

Keeping Your Plan Alive All Year Long

In the last edition of Smart Tips, we gave you some tips for developing your communication plan. This week, we're providing insight on how to keep it alive all year long.

Your communication plan should do more than record tactics and messages for the year. It should also establish priorities and help keep everyone in your department focused, which is why it's important that it has staying power.

Here are some ways to make your plan a living document:

1. Include a timeline to anticipate key activities. Your plan should include a calendar of key dates (such as the President's monthly Town Halls and that big Sales Force meeting coming up in September) that guides you through the year. The calendar component will help you anticipate what's coming up so you can hopefully avoid working in “crisis mode.”
   
   
2. Start with a plan format that's easy to use. No one wants to read, never mind write, an 80-page document. You can keep your plan alive by making it succinct, using conversational language and considering formats, such as Microsoft® Office PowerPoint®, that force you to use fewer words. For more information about best practices that can bolster your plan's usefulness, read our Smart Tips from January 2004, “Creating an Active (and Actionable) Communication Plan.”
   
   For additional impact, design a visual “at-a-glance” version of your plan. Plans designed as 11”x17” mini-posters have helped many of our clients focus on goals and tactics by keeping them in sight at all times (they're super easy to hang on an office or cubicle wall).
   Read more about the benefits of these mini-posters in our June 2004 Smart Tips, “Visual Plans Gain Buy-in Faster.”
   
   
3. Review your plan every quarter. Revisit your plan at least quarterly and adjust it accordingly. Just as your organization's needs and priorities change throughout the year, a good plan is never really “finished,” but instead evolves over time. Don't put your plan in a drawer never to see the light of day again. Read it. Pass it around. Write on it and put sticky notes on key pages. One caveat: The objectives should not change, but feel free to alter strategies and tactics as needed.
   

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