Managing important stakeholder communication
Effective communication is an important factor in keeping all key stakeholders informed in strategic planning or any effort involving managing change. Many initiatives fail because of poor communication among team members. Failing to communicate to your key stakeholders may well derail an otherwise successful organizational effort.
Developing strong communication skills during the change effort means monitoring processes, developing new programs and including all relevant members of the team in all planning phases. Good communication allows for all those involved in the process to be responsive to the organization’s business needs.
Guarantee that your strategic planning efforts are communicated successfully within your organization by using the following six-step process.
Step 1: Define Target Audiences
Who is receiving your messages? Identify the desired recipients so messages can be tailored specifically to ensure they are relevant. By understanding your target audiences, you can create valuable messages for them.
Step 2: Define Audience Commitment
What is your goal for each audience? Do you want to persuade them? Do you want to inform them? Determine a target level of engagement (i.e., Awareness, Understanding, Acceptance, or Commitment) for each stakeholder group. This determination will help to guide your work and secure success for your program or project.
Step 3: Define Key Messages
What do you want to say? Key communications serve to remind all stakeholders about the underlying reasons behind your project. Objectives may include giving a project overview, conveying information, stimulating action, reacting to concerns, or providing feedback. A good practice is to develop an overarching program or initiative message, with sub-messages from the overriding theme.
Step 4: Define Vehicles and Channels
How will you distribute your message? The right channels and vehicles depend on the size of your audiences, types of information, frequency, likely reaction, and desired response. It is important also to consider which vehicles and channels your audiences have used and are comfortable with.
Step 5: Determine Deliverer/Sender
Who is sending the message? The choice of who distributes the communication depends on what you want to accomplish. The greater the sender’s knowledge, credibility, and ability to influence the audience, the bigger impact the message will have for your recipients. In the early stages of your project, it is useful to have a senior project team member distribute messages. A note from a leader signals to other employees the importance of the effort.
Step 6: Determine Timing
When will the messages be sent? How often? The type of message influences the timing of the communication. Communication long before a change event can anticipate many questions and alleviate concerns. If there is a crisis, communication should be swift.
Wrapping it all up
Managing stakeholder communications requires thoughtful planning and effective execution. And, there are typically no shortcuts. But, once you have walked through the process once, repeating it becomes much easier. What will you do first?
