Brian Walch introduces the communication plan as the third pillar of project thinking. Map out who needs what information, how often, and how you'll deliver it. It uncovers overlooked stakeholders and keeps the right people informed without overwhelming everyone with every detail.
Happy Thursday. I'm continuing to talk a little bit about project thinking and how you can use some of the simple constructs of projects in other applications like work projects or maybe even personal projects. We've talked about objectives, so starting with the end in mind and defining what success looks like before you dive in to the project. And then we talked yesterday about milestones and how you can use milestones to measure progress and get buy in and hold yourself accountable. And so today we're going to talk a little bit about communication plan, which I think communication is vitally important to anything. And when you do a project, one of the things you do at the beginning is you create a communication plan. It is simply going through and defining who needs to be informed, what information they need, when do they need it and how often, and what's the best way to deliver that information. It's always amazing to me that when you do that and you make that deliberate, how it often reveals other people that need information that you didn't initially think of when you started the project. So I think it's a great exercise, whether you are formalizing it as a project or just taking on initiative is to just take some time to think about what is your communication plan as you go through that initiative. When you set up a good communication plan, it actually helps you move faster because people are going to be informed along the way. And it's not that everybody needs to know every detail. Some people may only need to know about certain events, or some people may only need regular weekly check ins or things like that. So, so there's a whole variety of things that you think about as you develop a communication plan. Doesn't have to be elaborate, doesn't have to be formal, but anything you can do to improve communication, I guarantee will help you experience success in all facets of life. So that's tip number three about project thinking. We got objectives, we got milestones, now we got develop a communication plan. Tomorrow we'll talk a little bit about methodologies.
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