Themes, Things, Myths and Monsters
Build a great communications strategy and avoid the monsters lurking behind your next communication.
I was in my office having a chat with one of my team when my boss popped his head in and said the words every communications manager dreads.
“There’s an email in your inbox. A message from the boss (by which he means the CEO) and he wants it out now. Make it happen.”
Before I could ask anymore he’d disappeared from the door, obviously feeling harassed. I opened up the email to find the message. A change to payroll systems and arrangements, including the payment cycle date. No context, no supporting information. Just do it. Even though it was going to cause a lot of noise in the business and none of his leaders have been prepped to answer questions about it.
I went looking for my boss, tried to explain the implications of sending this out without a clear strategy — it was too important and impactful to go out without proper consideration.
I got told in no uncertain terms just to send it. So, I did. But not before I sent him an email explaining how badly this would go. And sure enough, it bombed. Leaders were blindsided by their teams, demanding information that none of us had. Why was it changing? What happens if I’ve got bills to pay on payday? Does this affect the tax I pay? The questions were endless. For a week, it was a total scramble to backtrack, get briefing information together, get it approved and then out to leaders. By which time they had lost trust and integrity with their teams.
And the most annoying thing? The message was about something that shouldn’t have been a surprise, but no-one thought about involving the communications team to make sure it landed properly. They had a hard deadline to meet and they were going ahead regardless.
I’m sure we’ve all come across instances like this, where a communications strategy and plan would have made such a difference to how this message was received — no matter how big or small your organisation.
Building a strategy and plan.
There are many elements to a good communications strategy. Of course, you have to understand the business objectives, what the key messages are, segment the audience depending on the desired impact or outcome, have a watertight channel strategy to deliver it all, and how you’re going to measure its effectiveness.
When starting to build a strategy, I like to think about four pillars.
Themes
What is the overarching theme that you are communication relates to? If it’s about a particular subject or topic, does that align with a more strategic theme in the business? For instance, if this relates to an efficiency theme, then that’s what you communicate about. Same applies if it’s a people and culture thing. Show that it’s not just a random piece of work (even if it is!). Build it around a common context and clear priorities so that everyone knows how it fits into the big picture.
In the payroll system example, it could have been the theme was modernising systems to make them future-proof and deliver a better, more transparent employee experience. But no-one cares about that now because they are pissed-off at the way they were told.
Things
The actual thing that is happening or changing. What are the features and benefits? What will it mean for people? This is where you get into the guts of communicating the and will be important as you build the messaging and delivery plan.
Easier to understand payslip information, benefits statements, end of year tax information provided much quicker than before…the list of features and benefits goes on and on. Just no-one thought to tell anyone. Huge opportunity missed.
Myths
Is the gossip grapevine in full swing? Are people making up scare stories about what this involves? What do you need to counter with positive messaging and stories (without losing integrity)?
People were saying they were going to pay more tax in the new system — which wasn’t true but countering such gossip and misinformation with the truth up front would have made this land much softer and given people faith in their leadership. Now they wonder what other things are being done in secret, and making up outlandish stories to fill the void. Disaster for employee engagement.
Monsters
These are the big rocks that you know will be blocking the path down the road. The trick here is to have advance planning to deal with them so they don’t come as a surprise. Much like the debacle I described above. They knew this was coming. They thought it would be simple. They were wrong.
It doesn’t have to be a 30-page slide deck — in fact it really shouldn’t be. Have a strategy, build a plan.
Don’t get me started on how they thought an email was the best way to tell the thousands of people in the business that this was happening. Audience and channels — that’s a topic for another day!
Plan your strategy for success
This was a great example of how to turn something that could’ve been a positive and progressive initiative into a full-blown crisis.
Do you want to communicate something to somebody? Think about your strategy and plan, it will save you time and trouble! Or drop me a note and let’s chat.