Tested & approved: communication strategy development process

Over the past few months I’ve refined and tested my CommStrat development process with a number of clients.

I’m now at to the point where I can spend a few days interviewing key people in an organisation to develop a complete communication strategy. 

But I don’t follow the time-honoured Consultant Tradition of holding a workshop, disappearing for a month, and then reappearing with a 100page document which is more the result of Copy-Paste than anything else. 

Instead, I come in for a few hours a week for a couple of months, meeting various people and iterating the document so that it has buy-in from key stakeholders across the organisation. 

A few more days is usually needed for wider internal communications and consultation, resulting in a revised strategy and a change management workprogramme.

In many cases I’m now dropping in for half a day per week to oversee its implementation and mentor/coach the internal staff.