Communication Planning and Community Building

I attended a presentation about four years ago (I wish I could remember who presented it) where the message was: If you’ve had your project kickoff meeting and you haven’t started your communications strategy yet, you’re late!

As much as people generally dislike their current intranet, they’ve at least figured out where the stuff they need is. If they arrive on a Monday morning to find a brand new, super well-designed, and beautiful intranet waiting for them, chances are they’ll hate it. People generally don’t like surprises at work. So, getting the word out that something new is coming is very important. A great way to pave the way for this is to do a survey first, asking what people think of the current intranet: what works and what doesn’t.