Communicate, communicate, communicate — we are told, and almost every project has a communications strategy and plan that is wrongly focused and ineffective!

Getting your communications plan right is not difficult but requires asking different questions and using different measures of success.

In a review of 63 “Communication plans” I have only found one that was correctly focused. (Unfortunately, the author had moved on so their correct and appropriate plan was not being followed!)

Too often the focus of the communications plan is what the project team wants to communicate to the business and other stakeholders. WRONG! Your stakeholders want to know the answers to their questions, even if they’re not really relevant to the project. Unless you address their agendas they won’t hear yours.

Project teams are often surprised that, despite a blitz of communications, many staff still do not understand the nature, purpose or impacts of the project. This is because you’ve not addressed their concerns. Until you do, your communications are wasted (even if given in person by someone they trust).

Some consultancies seem to believe that, if you communicate again and again and again, the staff will accept the change. “Readiness to change” is measured by their receipt of the communications blitz. This is nonsense.

While it is easier to plan to say what YOU want to say, it is not effective. Our “How to manage your project communications guide” takes you through the correct communications planning process and even includes a guide for those charged with producing and approving communications.

People need to know

1. what is planned
2. what is going to happen
3. what the outcomes will be
4. how it likely to impact them individually
5. the project’s status
6. any changes to the above, and so on.

This is not rocket science but your communications plan needs to be properly planned to be ‘heard’.

We take you through the end-to-end communications process, from identifying the stakeholders through to assessing the level of communication ‘heard’ — all with steps that any novice can adopt and use.

Benefits

This Guide allows you to ensure

1. everyone that needs to be ‘in the loop’ is included
2. your stakeholders’ needs are identified and addressed
3. your communications workload is not over-extended or overly ambitious
4. you can and do measure the success of each and every communication
5. can produce good, worthwhile, readable communications
6. and the plan is controlled by the Project Manager and Governance Team.
   
   

Who should read

This Guide is essential for

1. The Project Team, especially those accountable for the communications plan and for producing communications
2. The Governance Team to ensure the communications plan enables and supports the change plans
3. The PMO to coordinate communication plans across projects to prevent communications overload on the recipients
   
   

Contents

1. Understanding communications
2. The end-to-end project communications process
3. How to generate your project communications plan
4. How to determine the ‘visibility’ of your project
5. How to identify your project stakeholders
6. How to generate a list of topics to be communicated
7. How to determine your communications media
8. How to define each stakeholder’s communications plan
9. How to allocate responsibilities for the communications plan
10. How  to manage communications consistency across projects
11. How to govern the communications plan
12. How to publish the communications plan
13. How to manage the communications plan
14. How to develop a communication — guidelines
15. How to track your communications’ effectiveness and success
16. How to take remedial action.

This Guide is accompanied with an example Communications Plan.

Bonus

Communications planning workshop slides
A set of slides for the facilitator of the communications planning workshop to take the participants successfully through the process.

What should you expect from your stakeholders?
A Value Delivery Management article by Jed Simms on what any project and governance team should expect from their stakeholders. Not rocket-science, but too often forgotten.

Guaranteed resistance!
A Value Delivery Management article by Jed Simms that challenges the notion that resistance to change is the norm; and that it is more likely to be caused by poor change management and communications than human nature.