By John Worne
Internal or external – everyone has a view on Comms. But when it comes to a Specialist-Generalist organising it, the mistake is to try to boil the whole ocean.
Management cascade is always messy – you can 'send' as much as you like, but the recipient decides what they want to receive.
So a top tip – which is true for any type of Comms – is to set out to fix some of it; but not all of it. And the simple route is through a 'grid'.
Tried and tested in central government – a 'Comms grid' captures the main announcements and events that are happening – usually for about 3 months ahead.
Just capturing this usually shows a number of great upcoming opportunities to land a few messages – and often throws up the odd scheduling clash too.
A grid also enables you to frame things with a few key themes you want to make headway on.
Most important of all it invites the myriad people in most large organisations who have "Comms" in their job, to draw attention to their event or activity – or just keep quiet and get on with it.
A grid – which is at heart just a simple forward calendar – gets you aligned, organised, saves clashes, lets people ask for help; and if you sprinkle in a little money and support invariably gets more people on message and with the programme.
A grid saves you from boiling the ocean; and focuses effort on improving the visible part of the iceberg. Get that right and the rest sorts itself.
The Specialist-Generalist 