The Communication Plan

The last plan is a communication plan. A communication plan is useful to determine how you are going to convince others to implement your change plan. Which influence principle will you use? How will you deal with the different power bases of those who are resistant to your plan? With this plan you should determine how you are going to convince those who do not like your plan, how you are going to sell your idea to your senior leadership, and how you are going to enroll others after the plan has been approved. One caveat with the communication plan, however, is that often people spend too much effort trying to change the minds of those in the negative group and not enough effort on keeping the positive members positive and going after those who are still on the fence, which is an easier task.

John Kotter’s seminal book on why organizational change efforts fail suggests that one of the reasons is a lack of a guiding coalition.¹³ By guiding coalition, he means single individuals or an outside group that leads the change effort. We have partially addressed this issue by suggesting the need for a transformation design team (TDT), but even that team will need a social plan. From our experience, the TDT can help identify pieces of the social plan (e.g., maybe the key people to be involved and their sources of power), but the involvement and communication plan needs to be created and led by the leadership team (LT).

In summary, a technical plan needs to have a clear vision, an analysis of the current situation, and a detailed action plan. A social plan needs to determine who your supporters and resistors are, how you are going to involve others in your plan, and how you are going to communicate your plan. The technical and social plans are critical because they represent the bulk of the transformation effort. Without detailed plans, organizations will have strong leadership with a passion to do something, but not necessarily the right thing. A technical plan helps the organization determine what the right thing is, and a social plan helps the leadership convince others their plan is better than other plans.