Plans are of little importance, but planning is essential
Winston Churchill
It’s all too easy to put planning at the bottom of your to-do list. You don’t have the time. You’re concentrating on the day to day. Getting things done. Firefighting. Maybe you’re a bit of a free spirit – you like the flexibility and innovation that comes with living from day-to-day. And, after all, you’re not a fortune teller… who knows what tomorrow will bring?
While this may be true, you’re making a mistake. And your effectiveness as a communicator (and your effectiveness in delivering communications that actually meet your objectives) will suffer as a result.
Every successful communications function I know has a strategy and plan for the year ahead. They know that this plan will help them drive results, get teams aligned, build influence.
Planning is a love it or hate it thing (and we can help you develop a sound communications strategy if you’re a hater) but here are a couple of secrets about planning that need to be more common knowledge.
One of the first things effective leaders learn is the difference between outputs and outcomes. Your team are all working long hours, they’re churning out emails, they’re always on the phone… but are they achieving anything? Are they contributing to the bottom line? Are they working towards the business objectives?
By putting a comms plan in place, you can make sure everything you spend your time on is moving you towards your final goal. You’ll cut out the waffle and spend time and resources on activities that are actually making a difference.
Much like talking to employees, preparing your leaders, or proof-reading a newsletter isn’t a waste of time, neither is planning. While you might not see the impact now, it’s going to make all the difference once it’s done. Understanding where you are now and where you want to be is key to helping you work out how to get there.
We’ve all seen those comms planning documents from hell. Eighty pages long with an accompanying deck of 64 densely packed slides filled with incomprehensible graphs and charts. That’s enough to put anyone off planning, even me!
It doesn’t have to be that way. You could just start your plan with a set of robust objectives and a plan of attack. If you’re not sure where to start, this article on how to develop an internal communications strategy might give you some ideas.
You might know where you’re going, but if you don’t know where you’ve been, you’re on a road to nowhere (obligatory Talking Heads reference, sorry)
By analysing where you are now, you can work out what worked in the past, what didn’t, what needs to change, and what needs to happen next. If you don’t understand the environment you’re working in (and your place in it), how do you expect to thrive in it?
As anyone in the military will tell you: “Time spent in reconnaissance is seldom wasted.”
Ultimately, it’s not about the plan, it’s about the planning. I don’t think I’ve ever written a plan that I’ve then executed to the letter. Life gets in the way, something unexpected comes along, and your plan goes out the window.
You need to review your plan regularly – things will change and your plan needs to change alongside. If things aren’t on track, then how are you going to change direction to get back on the right path? Maybe your end goal has moved? What do you need to do to achieve your new objectives?
Having done the planning, you can quickly re-plan.
Communications teams don’t achieve their success because they have a fool-proof plan or they know something you don’t. They succeed because they have a plan and because that plan is constantly evaluated and adjusted.
If you’ve got 10 minutes, why not listen to our podcast episode on how to put time aside to plan, strategise, and think.
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