Subject: Strategy made easy: simples steps to producing your strategic plan

Hello, I'm in charge of the internal comms of my organisation and I feel that the strategy hasn't been communicated properly to me and, therefore, to the staff. The team doesn't really feel involved in strategic decisions and I was wondering at what stage you think staff should be involved in the planning process and how do you get their buy-in? Thank you.Donna.

Well Donna 'should be' is something that is a moveable feast!  And dependent on the nature of what you do, your organisation size and so on. 

My advice would always be to involve those who are key stakeholders - and staff and volunteers are certainly those - at a very early stage.  So right from the point of thinking about the organisation's strategic direction.  Certainly as part of the process of better understanding beneficiary needs and wants, and certainly as part of the process of exploring the environment - who knows better than those who are involved in the day to day delivery?  I do know though that this early involvement doesn't always happen, and sometimes for good reasons... Very often the impact is what you describe - people don't feel part of the resultant strategy, and this may result in a lack of focus and committment.

Buy-in comes from involvement alongside good communication - the most successful approach seems to be using workshops - to explore, gather data, seek input, look at options and so on.  If workshops aren't possible, then other tools such as short papers going to team meetings for comment and to stimulate debate, or discussion forums on the intranet (if you have one), all help build knowledge and engagement and get comment on the things that matter.  Anything like that, so long as it's a 2-way street (ie the flow is 2-way with receivers building on what they hear and giving feedback).

I guess my question to you is how can you take responsibility for finding out why you all don't feel involved and communicated with?  It may be (simply) that you're not involved, or that people think they've involved you, but it hasn't worked as well as it could...  And once you've found out 'why', then think about how you can change that.  You're beautifully positioned to carefully campaign and lobby for change...

Hope it works out - if you can, let us know what happens.

Caroline