Let me share a few tools that you might find helpful as a project team. First one is taking that awareness, understanding commitment and action model and putting it into a tool format. So here, we've got awareness, understanding, commitment and action across the top. And we've got on the box, we've got a column that says list all your audiences below. So this is the stakeholders now here's how you use this particular tool. So the stakeholders would be those stakeholders from your systems map for your particular project.

Now, here's just an arbitrary group from one particular organization it sales and marketing Midwest, you can fill in your own we'll get to that in just a second but here's how you use the tool. So thinking about one particular project, we would use this highly sophisticated scoring system. The dots up on the top of filled in dots are filled in circle fully demonstrated, half filled in is partially demonstrated not done. demonstrated at all is an open circle and you don't currently have enough information is simply a question mark with a circle around it. And you for each group, then for all of the audience's just go through with a little bit of conversation or a little bit of thought on your own, and fill in the boxes with dots. And this will very quickly give you a sense of where have we been doing a good job?

And have we gone far enough? So what you've got to do is you've got to have an understanding of for each of these groups, how far do they need to be? Is it okay that they're only at understanding? Or do they need to get farther? And if so, how are you going to communicate to them? That's an example.

And here is your tool. Find this worksheet and this is an opportunity you can sketch this out really quickly. Just push pause and do it on your own or you can take this and get your whole project team together. I found project teams that use this on a weekly basis get a lot of clarity From what comes out. Now, it's easy to do these on your own take a little bit more time to do it with a group of people. But this is a very straightforward and simple assessment.

And it gives you lots of information to mark progress around the effectiveness of your communication. Here's another tool, one page briefing notes. Now these one page briefing notes and I'm going to share a couple examples with you in just a second these are point form graphic Laden, simplified sheets, or one pagers that are used to communicate complex information and make complicated stuff. Understandable. We can use your communication professionals if you've got any in your organization or somebody who can understand how do you take a five page project update and put it on one piece of paper? Or how do you take a 55 page project plan and put it on one piece of paper so communication professionals can be helpful with making comp Information is simple, but we need to have input from both the executives and the project teams.

Of course, communication professionals can't do this in a vacuum. And they really are. These tools are used to get everybody on the same page. They are not meant to be read to or sent to employees. They're talking notes. They're dated, because situations continually evolve.

And they need to contain essential strategy change and transition related messages. These one page briefing notes are a foundation for dialogue between all of the leaders and then between the supervisors and the employees. Let me share a few examples of some briefing notes. This was a quality project in one particular organization here. They had both strategy change and transition information. Basically, on one sheet of paper the how it works.

This was a very brief and simple overview of this new realized product system, how it works. That was the change information. Why are we doing This report card that they've been getting from customers and their customer surveys. And as of right now, what stops. So there was a transition message, there was a change message. And there was also a strategy message right in this one sheet of paper.

Here's an update. Now, this was not a railway company. But for some reason they loved the idea of railways. And they use this transforming Information Systems, integrating management systems across the whole organization. This had been underway for a while. And they were saying to people, we finished laying the tracks and we're going to start to run the train, all the trial runs are over.

And then we're going to build the rest of the track. So that was an analogy that they used. And it made sense. This was an official launch of something that had been underway, well had been tried to get underway for decades in this particular organization. And they've been trying to fix the operational excellence, the quality issues and they decided once and for all, now we're going to fix this thing. So the Story, they use this analogy.

And he used this journey through the desert on the left hand side. And, of course, this was a senior leader talking to a whole pile of directors in an organization. And as he looked out on the audience, he knew many, many people who all of the stories of the left side that they've been going through this walk through the desert, and really never fixing their operational problems. And what they were launching that particular day was the first step, the corrective action piece, the Lean Six Sigma was coming in a couple months, self assessments and risk management was going to come after that. And eventually they were going to meet international standards using ISO registration. That was the path they were taking.

And it was well thought out and they were going to get it this time after decades of wandering in the desert. So that was an interesting story and a great way to help people say Okay, looks like we're serious about it. The last thing I'd like to share with you around communication is a framework for Making communication planning simpler. You don't need to get a communication professional with you to build a communication plan. You certainly can, if you like, and they will be very helpful, I'm sure. But I think project teams need to be able to build their own communication plan on the back of a napkin.

So when I think about communication planning Made Easy, there really are three key elements to this, who are all of the players at any moment in time? What are all of their issues and concerns? And the third piece is how then are you going to get those particular groups information they need to resolve their current set of questions and issues and concerns. So here's where the napkins come in. You could do this over coffee and use three napkins and one napkin would have all of the stakeholder groups. That's the who column.

So here's an arbitrary list of stakeholder groups. And for our purposes here to do this relatively quickly. I'm just going to choose one group. So let's say it's the sales group and Think about if you were at a sales meeting last week, and we were talking about this particular project, what are their questions and their issues and concerns? What do they know? What are they bent out of shape about?

And then if you're going to get with the sales group and help them resolve these questions and issues and concerns, how are you going to do that? What resources might you need? Who needs to come to that meeting with you? Rather than have the sales guys come to a meetings specifically with your project team? What can you do to get on the sales meetings agenda and get to their meeting next week? Maybe you need to have the project leader and a VP there to bring a little bit of clout to the meeting.

So that's a simple way to develop a communication plan. One of the things that of course, becomes blatantly obvious is this I've made this very, very simple and very quick. One of the challenges is of course, is if we just looked at just the sales issue here, when we go and do that, how piece have we resolved All of their questions and and issues and concerns forever and ever. Probably not because a month out sales may have different issues and questions and concerns. The other thing is we've just picked sales here. So if we were to look at manufacturing or it or finance on how they're going to be impacted by this project, would they have the same issues and questions and concerns as sales?

Were Of course not. So this while it looks relatively straightforward, very quickly, can become comprehensive. And project teams are well served by using a tool like this, to continually stay on top of the communication challenge. It's your turn now. Here's your worksheet. And this is a tool that I find project teams use weekly and it can be extremely helpful around again, fulfilling the second side of their mandate.

So the WHO THE what the how. This is a more formal approach to napkins, but it works