Planning Communication Within Context

To create your communication plan, the first step is to master the timing of the fiscal, product, and seasonality lifecycles. The next step is to plan ahead for the type of quarterly context, the audience to be communicated with, and the dates by which your value must have been communicated to your audience via meetings, memos, voicemail, or any other method you chose.

For some WLP professionals, their audience will always be the same, no matter which of the three cycles they are planning around. For other readers, the audience will be different for each cycle.

Marcella, who works as a training manager at ABC MediCompany, regularly communicates the value of changes in the contract renewal department new hire training. To do so, Marcella created a map to define the fiscal quarters at ABC MediCompany to show her when she should use different fiscal, product, and seasonal context statements.

She wanted to make certain that she communicated her value to key audience members who were in a position to cite Marcella ‚ s contributions as part of the improvements within their departments. In Marcella ‚ s case, her audience for fiscal, new products, and seasonal sales were always the same.

Finally, for each member of her audience, Marcella noted the dates by which she wanted her value statements in front of them. Marcella ‚ s plan is shown in figure 11-3.

Figure 11-3: Marcella ‚ s quarterly context plan (step 9).

Marcella ‚ s map allows her to schedule meetings, presentations, and memos in advance. Using good project management techniques, Marcella works backward from the dates that she wants to communicate on to when she must have her evaluation data and updated baselines. Using this kind of plan, Marcella always seems to be in the right place at the right time. Her friends tell her she just seems to be so lucky to get into some of the conversations she does. As the old saying goes, ‚“Luck favors the prepared. ‚½