You can think of your internal communication campaign like of a marketing campaign that accompanies the launch of a new product – in our case, the ultimate deliverable of your change project. This can be a new process, a new business unit, introduction of a new tool, but it can also be as plain (yet yummy) vanilla as an introduction of an interface between two apps. The point is, no matter what your project is, it is an essential and mission critical one – otherwise you would not have been working on it in the first place, would you? And if you want to have a successful launch, the ultimate goal of your communication campaign is to get your stakeholders see the project and its values from the same perspective (or better) than yours and to have the scarcest resource – the attention – channeled in the direction of your project.

So where do we start? We start as almost always in the same place: we join Friedrich Nietzsche and Viktor Frankel and start with “Why”. What was the raison d’etre of the project and why was it initiated in the first place? One good way to dig deeper on this one would be asking this same “why” question at least five times. Thus, like peeling layers from an onion, you would be getting closer to the center with each round. Once you have got the formula you feel and think captures the essence of the project, congratulations! You have got the go-to answer and definition you can use during watercooler chit-chats, get-together rounds and should your CEO call you in the middle of the night and ask you why everybody in the company is so excited about your project. However, this is just the first step.

The second step is to identify the stakeholders, build them into relevant groups and perform stakeholder analysis. What are their ever-green and current issues and topics? What is in your project that is going to move the needle for them? Why is it in their best interest to be very well informed about the progress of your project? Once all these questions have been answered, you need to custom tailor your “why” for each of the stakeholders or stakeholder groups.

The third step will be looking at each stakeholder group and critically asking yourself the question: what is the level of detail each group would appreciate? If you get as passionate about your projects as I do, I feel your pain. At the first glance, everything seems important, and you might feel tempted to share too much. Now, when it comes to your communication strategy, too much can be both a good and a bad thing. When it comes to the number of places or sources where one could learn about your project (including some kind of internal Wiki, FAQ or similar) or even to the frequency of communication especially towards the launch, you will be hardly running the risk of having too much communication in place (not in theory, but in practice). However, it can be too much from the perspective of level of detail and delivered volume of a single bite. You do have to slice and dice the batches of your communication in easily digestible bits and pieces that your audience can swallow and ideally start craving for more.

This brings us to the fourth step – when is the craving for more going to reach its peak before it starts subsiding? That is, what is going to be the optimal frequency of the communication for each group? Finally, you have to ask yourself the question – what is the best communication channel for each group? Here, again, you must put their hat on and run a mile in their shoes, as the most common mistake here is to reach out to your “go-to” tool and channel. Even if you don’t read the intranet articles, but you know that your stakeholder group does – start writing and publishing them. If you never thought of yourself as a great presenter – the time to discover and unleash your rhetorical skills for the next town hall meeting is now. Should the treacherous question “but is it really worth it?”.. ever start entering your head, think again of your “why” and may its power be with you.

Below as an example is an extract from a template from a recent project: