Three Must-Dos Before You Start Strategic Communications Planning

Once the holiday music starts playing on the radio, you know it’s time for strategic communications planning.

So you schedule a team meeting (maybe even an offsite retreat if your budget is flush), send out the calendar invites, and then turn back to your to-do list for the day.

Now that you’ve made a date with strategy, you can put it out of your mind until it’s time for the big event, the session that will mysteriously reveal how your next year will unfold.

I call this the crystal ball approach to planning, and it seldom delivers the magical results we hope it will. If you and your team show up to the strategic planning session with nothing but hopefulness to guide you, you’ll likely end up with one of these situations:

• A meeting that buzzes with “great energy” but doesn’t yield anything but whiteboard scribbles
• A free-for-all discussion that allows everyone to vent their frustrations about the past year but fails to generate a vision for the future
• A list of action items that looks good at the time but doesn’t really make sense as you start to execute it
• A sketch of three or four “pillars,” with no time to flesh out what those overarching topics mean in terms of outcomes

Relying on a single meeting to spontaneously produce the guidance you need for the next year puts way too much pressure on that event. You’ll get much better results if you spend some time preparing for your planning session.

To lay the groundwork for a fruitful conversation, block off some time in your calendar for thinking. Not planning but reflecting and analyzing, doing the deep work that will create a strong foundation for the shallower work of designing your approach to the coming year.

Here are three specific things worth thinking about if you want to make the most of your strategic planning meeting:

1. Whom are you talking to? What have you learned over the past year about your target audience? Which assumptions have been confirmed and which have been disproven? What new information have you gained that gives you deeper insight into the different factors that drive the people you’re trying to persuade?
   
   Any effective communications plan starts with Who, not What, and you already know that. But in the year-end rush to set out your communication initiatives for the next 12 months, it’s easy to lose sight of the people you’re communicating with. Make sure you revisit your latest audience analysis or set of buyer personas so you anchor your planning in up-to-date information.
   
   
   
2. What do you want to achieve? Brainstorming can be intoxicating. It’s fun to get the whole team together and “blue sky” as a group, especially over some holiday treats. But brainstorming is just part of the strategic planning process. To ensure that it forms a productive part, get clear about why you’re doing it.
   
   What problems do you need your strategic plan to solve? What obstacles do you need it to show you the way around? What must your plan enable you to DO?
   
   Strategic planning is best understood as a project rather than an event. As with any project, it’s critical to know what success looks like before you begin.
   
   
   
3. How well have your communications been performing? Revisit the key messages you’ve been sharing with your audience over the past year? How have they landed? What impact have they had? How do you know how well they’ve been working?
   
   Part of your strategic planning will involve formulating your key messages for the coming year, so spend some time contemplating your current messaging. What data do you have to help you understand how well it’s been connecting with your audience? What anecdotal evidence does your team have to supplement hard data, such as analytics from your website, emails, and social media platforms?
   
   If you’ve been thoughtful and consistent with your messaging, over time it becomes strongly embedded in your team culture. That’s generally a good thing, but it’s also wise to avoid ever getting too attached to your key messages. In fact, part of preparing for strategic planning involves practicing conscious detachment from your standard themes.
   
   You are, after all, envisioning a brand-new year. Be careful not to carry into that vision baggage that feels familiar but is just weighing you down, preventing you from fostering meaningful connections with your audience.
   

With a little forethought, your strategic planning meeting can become the fruitful, energizing experience you imagined when you set it up in your calendar. A well-orchestrated collaboration with the whole team may even work a wee bit of magic.