Communicating your strategy for best results

You have spent a year formulating your strategy. It is firmly and clearly stated in a Powerpoint. You are done, right? Not by a long shot. Let's ignore for a moment the effort required to implement, and let's focus on the communication effort. You need to clearly communicate to ALL stakeholders the new strategy and how it affects them. The companies that don't know how to do this send out an email (with the powerpoint and a nice introduction) and then forget about it.  Then they wonder why their efforts didn't pan out and nothing really changed.

Two things you have to remember:

1. You and your management team know more than everybody else.
2. The rest of your stakeholders can not read your mind to see what's in it - but they will try.

To maximize results tell your coworkers, subordinates, providers, partners and clients what they should expect from the new strategy and the benefits they will receive. You have to craft the message according to the audience (communications 101) and make sure the message is visible and repeated (that is why advertising works). If required, you should form a transformation and communications office to make sure that happens.

More on the how in a latter post...