2.11. COMMUNICATION PLANNING

Communication is critical to the success of any change initiative. It is not a web site or an onslaught of unplanned e-mails—that is spam! Effective communication involves preparing messages for a specific audience, delivering those messages, and validating they were received. Many organizations have internal communication departments because of the criticality of effective communication to the successful operations of an organization. Leading IT organizations have an internal communication department devoted to communicating IT issues to the appropriate stakeholders. In general, people abhor change much the way nature abhors a vacuum. Stakeholder analysis is the foundation for effective communication. It identifies the audiences, their issues, and how they should be communicated to. From this foundation, a plan must be derived that is lockstep with the execution plan and provides targeted messages to support organization change management.

Exhibit 2.7 shows an effective communication planning process. The activities that must occur are:

  1. Building awareness

  2. Soliciting support

  3. Facilitating collaboration

  4. Obtaining approval

  5. Communicating results

Figure 2.7. COMMUNICATION PLANNING

The key point is that key stakeholders and their issues must be identified, purposeful messages must be delivered to the key stakeholders in a manner consistent with their preferences ...

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