I believe there are Seven Big Things you need to ensure great communications for you and your organization. Adhering to each of these seven principles can help you thrive during any communications opportunity or challenge.
In this post, I’ll expand on one of the Big Things:
Define clearly what you’re trying to accomplish.
“What are we trying to do here?”
-Let’s hold a press conference.
-Can we get an op-ed in The New York Times?
-It would be great if we can post a video on social media and have it go viral!
“I mean, what are we *actually* trying to do here? What’s our big objective?”
It’s a conversation that I - and other communications leaders - have had throughout our careers. Before taking the vital step of clearly level-setting your goal and defining success, there’s a tendency to jump right into tactics.
Skipping this important first step of establishing the goal is a big mistake, one that will create headaches down the road.
The reality is you can’t determine tactics - or develop messaging or identify channels or work through other components of a good communications campaign - until everyone on the team is fully aligned on what you’re trying to achieve. Once you do that, you now have an objective that everyone should be working toward in concert.
So let’s get back to that first question: What are we trying to do here? Here are examples of topline goals that will help you be smart about identifying tactics and building out the rest of your communications planning:
“Raise the visibility of our organization so we can increase membership and donors”
“Successfully launch a new program, with greater awareness leading to robust adoption”
“Increase grassroots and grasstops support for the legislation that is our organization’s top priority”
“Restore trust and confidence in our organization after an operational error, which has led to a flood of criticism on social media and into our call center”
And then for each of these you create metrics to measure success.
Once you’ve clearly defined your goal and cascaded it to your team, you’ll be ready to determine what tactics and other communications components will drive you toward success.
Maybe a press conference makes sense or maybe there are other more effective ways to get your message out. Ultimately, always keep your topline goal in mind and continually ask yourself: will doing X help us get closer to reaching our goal? If the answer is “no” then it’s not a worthwhile investment of your time and resources.
Now, take a look at the picture above. It’s from Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope.
Everyone in that briefing room - from the squadron leader to Luke Skywalker to each pilot - knows what they’re trying to do: blow up the Death Star. Once they understand that goal, and thanks to the information in the R2 unit, they can discuss the plan, including tactics that will achieve success.
So the next time you’re in a meeting and you’re discussing tactics and communications planning without understanding what the overarching goal is, be the person who asks, “What are we trying to do here?” Asking that question will help you and the team be in a far better position to stay on target and be successful.
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