Having a communications plan and ensuring that it’s well shared and understood is key in ensuring that your implementation plans run smoothly – but often teams with solid plans are surprised by obstacles that surface during implementation. Marketing Communications Plans are often innovative – adapting to changes in technology, channels, market conditions, and donor expectations – but changes to trusted and familiar processes can also create anxiety and raise new questions.
Some of the warning signs to watch out for:
- Staff and volunteers start to become disengaged or anxious but reluctant to share their concerns or worries.
- Teams indicate confusion around who decision-makers are or even when it seems that clear decisions were made, once implementation is underway new questions surface that can cause delays.
- Internal communications have become fragmented or ineffective. Information that you thought was widely shared doesn’t seem to be making it to key staff or volunteers. Staff are holding onto information because their unasked questions or concerns have not yet been addressed.
- Teams gravitate to the familiar – quickly lapsing back into past processes or practices when things become difficult.
- As teams struggle with implementation you become worried your marketing needs have surpassed their skill level. Marketing Communication teams are often very versatile, flexible, adaptable, and motivated learners – but you may have reached the point where you need to consider leveraging new expertise to boost their development.
- It seems to take forever to get a marketing campaign up and running. This can be a sure sign that your team is spread too thin. It’s not that your plan isn’t clear – they just have too much to do and not enough time or resources to get everything done in a timely manner. Over the years, scope creep or gradually expanding project scope can incrementally sneak into even the best of plans and dilute the impact of your efforts.
If you find yourself recognizing some of these warning signs the first step is easy. One of the most common communication mistakes is forgetting to keep all conversations two-way. Set up a team meeting to ensure that everyone understands their role in making the plan a success. Like fundraising, a communications plan will only bear fruit if everyone understands how they can contribute to goals and priorities.
If you need additional insight, don’t hesitate to contact us. We can facilitate discussions to identify barriers that staff may be reluctant to share. We can also sit down with teams and help plan your communications activities over a specific timeframe, ensuring that you have clear implementation goals and objectives that will achieve the results you’re looking for. Once teams have a clear implementation schedule, if you find that you need additional expertise, we can help coach, fill in gaps and even help with monitoring results, and producing insightful reports to aid in organizational learning.