You’ve created the perfect communications strategy, now what?

Creating a communications strategy is one thing, getting buy in from your stakeholders is another.

Most seasoned communications professionals know that one of the biggest challenges around taking a strategic approach to your communications work can be getting buy-in from your subject matter experts, program managers and senior leaders.

In last week’s newsletter we looked at why it’s important to take a strategic approach. This week it’s all about how you can get buy in once you’ve drafted your strategy.

Talk early, talk often

Talking to your stakeholders before you start the strategy, not just once you want their review or approval, helps to get their early buy in. It’s also a chance to ask them questions about what they’d like to see in the strategy, ideas about channels to reach relevant audiences and to pick their brains about potential risks.

Reach out to them (within reason) as you’re developing the strategy to clarify their thinking and ensure it’s being captured. Once you reach the review or approval stage, they will have a good understanding about what you have developed and ideally it will make getting their endorsement a lot smoother.

Don’t labour on a strategy

Developing a strategy is important, but it is not everything. It creates a roadmap for how you approach your communications project or challenge, but it shouldn’t take you so long to develop that it takes significant time away from the implementation of it.

Sometimes even though you have the best intentions, it can be your stakeholders that labour over what you have created and take days to review your work. There are some tactics you can use to avoid this including presenting the strategy to them rather than sending them a document to review. It’s also worth reiterating several times that this is a roadmap not a contract. What you are asking them to endorse is the overarching approach and there will be opportunities to tweak specifics in the materials that you develop as the strategy is implemented.

Small steps to big change

Strategies are a fantastic opportunity to be creative and propose new ideas, but they’re not a blank canvas to try whatever you want. Sometimes being too creative in the strategy stage can be what creates resistance with stakeholders. I recommend taking small steps where you feel change is warranted rather than a full change in approach. It also makes sense to call out where you are proposing to do things differently and discuss how you will mitigate any risk that this new approach could bring with it. This will show your stakeholders that you have thought through what you are proposing and help to get their buy in. Over time you can build up to bigger changes if these small steps work well.

This is by no means an exhaustive article, but I hope it gives you some ideas on how you can get buy in from your stakeholders more seamlessly and start implementing your strategy sooner!