[00:01:15] Welcome back. And before we kick off, I just wanted to say a huge thank you to those who tuned into the first episode of the podcast and shared your feedback. It was great to get your questions and hear what you thought about it. Please keep sending it through. I love feedback. It's how I keep learning and I won't cry about it. I promise. So please send it on through.

[00:01:37] Also, if you're enjoying the podcast so far, I'd love for you to do something really simple for me. Hit the subscribe button. It costs absolutely nothing but a few taps of your fingers. And that will help us share the learning even further. So in today's episode, we're sticking with a bit of a foundations theme or comms 101.

[00:01:56] And I'm going to share the three outcomes every comms plan should have. Let's start with the comms plan itself and we will unpack this more in future episodes. But when you're creating a communication strategy and a communication plan, it's really critical to start with the end in mind. You need to know what it is you're trying to achieve before you can develop the strategy and the relevant tactics.

[00:02:18] Otherwise, it's just a bunch of tactics with no purpose. And the chances of you actually achieving what you want to achieve are much more limited. Knowing what you're trying to achieve starts with getting a brief from your client. Whether that's a client of your business or within the business in which you operate. So for example, I used to work in a corporate affairs team where my client was a finance team and the CEO and a few other teams. So they were my internal clients. Here's some of the questions that I like to ask of the sponsor or the heat client. And before we get into that, remember that secondhand briefs never work. You want to go to the source, the person who's paying the bills and find out from them what they see success, because if you go to let's say the HR person or the manager who's been thrown the work,

[00:03:08] you'll get their desired outcomes or the outcomes that they've interpreted from the brief that they've received from higher-up. Not necessarily the business's desired outcomes. So if you are taking a brief and, uh, you're in that position where there's somebody else sort of a middleman, so to speak, definitely request that you talk to the person who is the sponsor.

[00:03:29] And just say, look, ethically, I need to understand what they want to achieve for the business. So that's why I need to talk to them about their desired outcomes and then work with you to fill out the brief. So these are the questions. Are you ready? Grab a pen and paper and write these down or record these somehow.

[00:03:50] Question number one. What is the problem you're trying to solve? So again, what is the problem you're trying to solve? So this is about the project or the issue itself. And we want to know this because we need to then think about where comms will fit in. And if we get a sense that they think comms will be the silver bullet to their problems, then we probably need to manage some expectations.

[00:04:15] But it also gives us a really good idea of what the intended outcome is going to be.

[00:04:23] Question number two. Why is this a problem for you right now? This will give you a sense of the urgency of the situation and therefore how critical the comms component is, and therefore how much resource you're going to suggest they throw at this through a communication perspective. But it can also help you establish some metrics, and we will talk about measurement and metrics a little later in the series.

[00:04:49] Number three, what or who are the potential roadblocks? Now we're crossing into audience and systemic issues here. So this is where we can find out what the current sentiment is among audience groups. If there's particular leaders who might hold up our comms, for example, or if there's issues with channels, like, you know, the internet is just a piece of crap or, you know, people never look at it because it always on the road or those sorts of things.

[00:05:15] Or there might be some process issues as well. It's also where you can ask a follow-up question. Like, what else is going on that is going to be a distraction? If there's a lot of change going on or there's an event or something, there's a lot of noise. So the chances of your particular piece of communication resonating

[00:05:36] is going to be hindered somewhat by all of that noise, or you're going to have to think of how you're going to cut through it. So once again, those three questions. What's the problem you're trying to solve. Why is this a problem for you right now? And what, or who are the potential roadblocks? So once you've got these three big questions, you can really get into the nitty gritty, like deadlines what's happening and when key milestones and all of those sorts of bits and pieces.

[00:06:06] And now that you've got the brief, you can start to strategise. And in a later episode, I'm going to get into the differences between the strategy and the plan. But right now there's three outcomes that you'll develop that will drive the common strategy and the plan. And they are know, feel and do. So, what do you want your audience to know, feel and do as a result of your communication strategy?

[00:06:34] So, firstly, let's start with what you want your audience to know. We're usually actually pretty good at this part. It's pretty factual. It's what's happening. And when, but it's also that compelling case for why. We want people to know why something is happening, the context, the benefits of a change, the reasons why decisions were made when people don't know that you're asking them to do something in a vacuum of information, which means they won't do it.

[00:07:03] But if you're open and honest and lay out the case for why that's really going to help drive action.

[00:07:09] Let's skip the feel for a bit and head onto the do’s. So again, this is something that we're usually pretty good at. It's about the actions you need people to take as a result of your communication. So this could be something like, “Hey, we need to change this process to doing this, or we're going to be changing the way we work or we're going to be changing a product that we offer a customer.”

[00:07:31] That is all change. And that is something that requires an action of people. So again, it's just being really clear on what is the due outcome that you want people to take as a result of your communication. And that helps you get some really good metrics as well around these outcomes, because you can test whether or not people are taking those actions.

[00:07:51] And then understand more of the why or why not. They're doing that.

[00:07:56] Finally let's look at feel, and feel is the part that is usually forgotten. It's the outcome that we don't really think about, especially when we're not taking an audience-centered approach. And like I spoke about in the first episode, starting with who is critical to everything. Let me think about feel. This is what we want people to feel as a result of the messaging they have received. So for example, let's say there's a change happening, and we want people to change the way that they

[00:08:24] uh, do a process at work, maybe let's say for example, there is a new system being put in and its new system for collecting customer data. So when we break down our audiences, we want, uh, people in the contact center to be able to do something differently and use a different system. We want to the managers of those teams to support them for et cetera, et cetera.

[00:08:45] If I don't feel confident about that process or if I don't feel like it's the right thing to do, because I haven't been given information that tells me about the compelling case for why, or I haven't been given enough information to build that confidence in changing this process, I will not do it. Or I will find a workaround, I'll find another way to do it.

[00:09:10] Same thing. If the leaders don't feel confident in supporting their team, then they're not going to do it. So, this is really where you get into the guts of effective communication. It's how you want people to feel. Because that then drives the types of messages that are you put out. But it also drives some of the other activity. Like is there a learning and development component to this? Is there a leadership component to this that crosses a little bit into the change management territory, which we will get to, um, later on in the series?

[00:09:39] But again, come back to the field and it could even just be something like, “Hey, we've got a new strategy,” or, “Hey, we've got this amazing new communications campaign that's going out to our customers or new advertising”. We want people to feel excited about that. So how can your messaging and the, your communication tactics help to build a sense of excitement?

[00:09:59] So once again, those three outcomes that you absolutely need to have in your plan are know - what do you want your audience to know? Feel and do. And you should be able to get that from getting a really good brief right up front. And again, the questions you want to ask the sponsor. In that briefing session are: what's the problem you're going to solve or trying to solve;

[00:10:25] why is this a problem for you right now; and what, or who are the potential roadblocks? So when you have those in place and especially the know, feel, do outcomes, that's when you're able to then design a strategy that will help you get to those outcomes. Remember, it's about starting with the end in mind.

[00:10:45] Okay. And it helps you become much more focused on what you will do and what you won't do. So that's our episode for today as I promised last week always going to be short always going to be impactful hopefully and if you've got any questions or comments absolutely shoot them through. Once again, please hit the subscribe button it would mean the world to me and I’m sure that it would help us share this learning even further. In the meantime, thanks for joining in and keep doing amazing things!

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