How to make a comms plan stick

In a nutshell, a comms plan aims to engage and influence your key audiences so you can achieve your organisation’s goals. 

Whether you’re looking to recruit and retain more members or donors; steward your supporters into greater advocacy; or lobby decision-makers, your comms plan needs to be owned and delivered by your whole organisation for change to happen. 

In this blog, we walk you through: 

• Project set up 

• Project implementation 

• Post project 

Let’s start at the very beginning. 

Setting up the project 

• Be very clear about what success looks like: Your comms plan needs a purpose to justify the time and money you’re going to spend. Before you start, be very clear about what your comms plan will contribute to your organisation’s objectives. Can you describe in very broad terms, perhaps in a single sentence, what your plan will achieve? As the project progresses, this statement will remind everyone involved why you are doing the work and therefore why you are asking for their time.  

• Establish what your barriers might be: There’s a chance your comms plan will ask people to change the focus of their work or indeed the actual way they work. Apart from overcoming people’s natural resistance to change, what other barriers might you face during the project? Think about what technological, logistical, procedural or financial restrictions might need tackling and either make improvements before you start or plot when you will pay attention to them within your project plan.   

• Get senior leaders’ buy-in: You will need support for your plan at a senior level. Before you start the work, find out who in the organisation needs to give their backing. For example, beyond your own team, who’s going to help deliver the plan to the benefit of the whole organisation? Who might have to change their team’s plans or budget? What are the processes and procedures you might have to follow around setting and reporting on budgets, procurement, signing off recommendations? What’s the role of elected officers or other non-staff members? Early engagement options include:  

• Set up your steering group and project team: Your steering group act as critical friends as well as project champions, who you keep informed via scheduled milestone meetings. Your project team, in comparison, are your colleagues who have the insight, and the eventual responsibility, to champion and deliver the plan. You’ll meet weekly, maybe fortnightly, on very practical detail, so pick the ‘doers’ from across the organisation.  

• Set KPIs as part of the project: Your plan needs to include setting KPIs and metrics to measure and celebrate success across many teams’ work. Creating KPIs together can build in joint responsibility early. You can read Agenda’s blog on creating KPIs here.  

• Plan your plan: You might choose a simple spreadsheet or a project management tool but, whatever you choose, have clear milestones and actions. Keep rolling notes from meetings, upload all your documents to the shared drive for the project team and steering group members – and anyone else who wants to learn what’s happening.  

During the project 

• Break up your learnings into smaller chunks: As you move through the project, you’ll find areas of work which can change now. Hold them as ‘quick wins’ in a shared document with actions allocated to colleagues. Such quick wins tend to be small but mighty – like updating everyone’s email signatures on the same day with the same message/ask. Such early organisation-wide shifts in the ‘way we do things’ means change comes as evolution not revolution, making it less scary and overwhelming.  

  You’ll also identify medium-term work which might need a bit more planning or resource to be successful – like updating an existing volunteers’ toolkit or training session or updating your brand and house style materials. It’s sometimes best to make these changes when the content is due to be refreshed so plot out a transition plan based on need, opportunity and workload. 

  Finally, you’ll identify long-term actions to really make your plan stick which often require plans in themselves – like scoping a new CRM platform or redesigning your website.  

• Regular progress reports: As well as keeping your project team and steering group informed, it’s important to share updates with your organisation as you go along, don’t just wait until the end of the project for the big reveal. Get on the agenda at scheduled meetings or events with other teams; ask for feedback and test ideas through surveys and polls; hold mini workshops; add a regular article to the staff newsletter.  

• Build a team of advocates: As you’re getting close to roll-out, you could extend your project team to include more colleagues who will anchor the work in their teams.  These ‘super adopters’ could be the staff who will manage or deliver the work, help others implement the change and overcome any resistance that your plan might face.   

• Team members need to be the biggest champions of all: It’s likely that your comms team have been used to doing things a certain way for a long time. As a result, they may take any critical feedback or significant changes personally, rather than seeing the bigger picture. Some might need the focus of their roles changing or training in new skills to make the plan stick. Keeping these colleagues close is very important throughout the project. Make sure there’s always an item on the team meeting agenda, ask them where they see change is needed and giving them mini tasks to contribute to the wider project - e.g. source inspiration from other organisations.  

After the project  

Rolling out is the hardest thing to do. Part of your project plan must include significant scheduling of how, when and who rolls out changes. Areas to consider:  

• Mapping out content which needs to change: New branding, messaging or asks will need to be applied across your content. Not everything has to change at once, so map all channels, decide what’s urgent, what is due for a refresh anyway, what can wait and where the time and money is best spent. Keep a clear plan, allocate to a member of staff, and get cracking!  

• Training: You will need team-by-team training on new ways of working, including brand guidelines/house style, so work with the head of department on how to talk to their team to encourage the most interest and engagement. You can also weave elements of the comms plan into new starter induction sessions. You can record webinars for distribution through the internal newsletter. And you can offer a drop-in session for people who have early questions on what it means for them.  

• Ongoing support: People prefer to stick with what they know – so one-off training is not enough to anchor your plan. You can create a series of toolkits and checklists for colleagues to help themselves; you can have a semi-regular slot at team meetings to talk through one or two aspects of the change plus share any early successes; and you can spend time in teams helping them make the changes to their materials or activities.  

• Advocates and adopters: Working with your ‘bought in’ colleagues at senior and team level to encourage – or indeed enforce implementation – will help your plan stick. Make sure you use these colleagues to spot anything that’s not working so you can adjust accordingly. Not everything’s going to be perfect!  

• Weave your plan into employee objectives: To further incentivise commitment to your plan, you could incorporate specific objectives within relevant employee one-to-ones and annual reviews. This will help to ensure that it becomes a firm part of your organisation’s culture – and any issues with applying the work in real life, can be identified and overcome.  

• Keep the momentum going: Once the initial project has come to an end, spend time with your senior leaders to talk through how far your plan is achieving its initial purpose. As well as referring to your KPIs and metrics, this could be through anecdotes and stories, and opportunities to evolve the plan to better achieve the organisation’s needs.  

One last thought 

Creating and embedding a comms plan takes a lot of time. As an agency owner, of course I would suggest bringing in external experts to take the strain, offer fresh eyes, share excellent ideas - and be brave enough to hold the difficult conversations. But as a former senior leader, I’d definitely say find an agency that knows the processes and the pitfalls, and one which will constantly keep you and everyone who matters in the loop. 

At Agenda, our team operates as part of your team. We believe in a ‘with you’ not ‘for you’ approach, where we adapt as we find out what the work needs to succeed, rather than sticking doggedly to a one-size-fits-all methodology. 

Why not let us share our years of experience and expertise to help create and embed a comms plan for your organisation? Get in touch to book a conversation, come to a workshop or hire our team.