We’re told to ‘communicate, communicate, communicate’ but too often we send out the wrong communications! The focus is usually on what the project team wants to say, not on what the audience wants to hear. If you don’t address their agendas you won’t be heard. Simple.

This Guide takes you through a simple process that refocuses your whole communications plan on what your stakeholders want to know about.

What do they want to hear?

How do they want receive the information?

How will we know if we’ve been heard?

This are all basic questions that too often are not even asked, let alone answered. Beautifully designed and crafted communications are sent out and are not read.

Staff often want to know

• what is planned
• what is going to happen (to them)
• what the outcomes will be
• when is this going to happen
• how they’ll be supported
• what they can do to help/influence what happens, and so on.

Unless you’re being heard, you’re not communicating. This Guide ensures you are heard.

How to manage your project’s communications

1. Understanding communications
2. The end-to-end project communications process
3. How to generate your project communications plan
4. How to determine the ‘visibility’ of your project
5. How to identify your project stakeholders
6. How to generate a list of topics to be communicated
7. How to determine your communications media
8. How to define each stakeholder’s communications plan
9. How to allocate responsibilities for the communications plan
10. How to manage communications consistency across projects
11. How to govern the communications plan
12. How to publish the communications plan 
13. How to manage the communications plan
14. How to develop a communication - guidelines
15. How to track your communications’ effectiveness and success
16. How to take remedial action

• Project (and change) practitioners - to plan and manage an effective communications program
• Project governance team - to oversee the communications to ensure they are effective
• PPMOs - to oversee and coordinate where necessary the portfolio’s communications

• Everyone that should be in the loop is included
• Your stakeholder’s needs are identified and addressed
• Your communications workload is not over-extended or overly ambitious
• You can and do measure the success of each and every communication
• You can produce good, worthwhile, readable communications
• You get heard by the recipients

Coming soon