Want to communicate your business strategy to the lines of business responsibles, market leaders and those in charge of support functions? Taking either a top-down or bottom-up approach, it often falls to the communicators to spread the news. This can be comfortable or uncomfortable, depending on the content of 1-to-3-to-5-year plans to be presented and discussed.
Combining strategy and communication
At the yearly gathering of all lines of business heads, local office representatives and chiefs of support functions, everyone wants to be heard and seen. Trying to juggle everybody’s priorities and demands as a communication professional isn’t always easy. “Yes, your strategic input is valuable too.” “We should formulate some specific communication measures.” “But how will we communicate that to your clients? I’ll be glad to help pull some ideas together and write up a communication plan, you know,” I’d hear myself say.
No loose ends – wrapping up the day’s content
To keep track of all that is communicated on such a highly intense and fully packed day, we decided to record the presentation sessions as webcasts and send a link to all participants thereafter. This way, they could review the discussions leading up to the decisions taken and recap the day’s content. What was my role as a communication professional? I made sure that the internal technical set-up was ready, the recording was handled by Solutionpark and the link sent to participants the following day.
From a communication perspective I like to structure content, categorize it and create user-friendly download sections in my webcasts. This way, the viewer can easily navigate through the various subjects, especially if there are a number of different aspects or speakers involved. Explaining your company’s strategy, the ‘Whys and Why Nots’ is a valuable experience, and I find, an emotional topic that deserves to be documented on video.
As a communication professional I know what it’s like struggling for attention and budget as well as the Executives’ time to get involved in communication activities. Therefore you need to drive for an effective approach with new technologies that makes them easy to use widely and distribute your communication message to a broad audience quickly: E-mail, intranet, Internet with all its reader-/viewer-friendly news-oriented features available at their fingertips.