Simple? So where do you start?
1) Take the opportunity of our newfound virtual freedom. But before you dive in, getting all trigger happy and start scheduling a ‘ball breaking’ number of meetings into everyone’s diaries, you must start by mapping out what topics you/the business needs to/would like to discuss. Involve the whole team in this exercise. I suggest running this at your next team meeting (if you have them).
I suggest the following 11 key areas:
- Purpose and Vision
- Plan, Policies and Objectives (Company and Individual)
- Financials and Accounting
- Human Resources
- Information Technology
- Operations and Business Development
- Marketing and Communications
- Service and Propositions
- Compliance and Governance
- Continual Improvements
- Projects and work in progress
These pretty much cover the breadth and depth of the whole business, but feel free to add any of your own topics which may not fall into one or more of these areas.
2) Next, have a think about how frequently you would like to discuss each of these. Then mark them with an A – Annually, Q – Quarterly, M – Monthly, W – Weekly and D – Daily. Simple!
3) Now… and this one is a new addition to this message. You may need to decide how and where you are going to discuss each of these topics. In the new world, that could be face to face, fully remote or a hybrid of the two! So, again, mark up your list with either F2F – Face to face, R – Remote or HB – Hybrid.
4) Then mark at the side of each of the areas, the initials of the roles that should be involved in the discussions of these. Do not use the names or initials of the people in your team, as I am trying to highlight if another problem exists.
For example, for Financial Planner – use FP, Paraplanner – use PP – you get the idea.
5) Work through each area until you are done.
BE AWARE – it may feel a little overwhelming and may look like you’re never going to have any time to do anything else after all of these meetings, but please trust me and stick with it.
6) Once you are done – take a step back and have a look. Check you haven’t missed anything. If you have done this right you will never have to do this exercise again. Winner!
What you have created is your whole year’s communication strategy; right there on one piece of paper.
It should look something like this.
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