At my first agency, there was an expectation that all junior level employees participate in the strategic planning process and offer up ideas. A lot of times the junior level employees demonstrated the most creative thinking because they weren’t so burned out of the brainstorming process.

Thanks to this post I’m going to do a better job at empowering my staff to exercise their creative juices for our clients.

LISTEN! Its shocking, but true: so many of us want to have the first and final word that we forget about this essential step. The key to actually having successful discourse is the ability to listen to others and take on board the needs/concerns/opininon of you clients, audience, constituents, etc.

Identify your audience: When it comes to communicating about your company, many have a tendency to get caught up with the shiny new strategy or tool and reach out to audiences haphazardly, or simply spray their message to everyone they can think of. This is exactly what you don’t want to do. If you can identify your audience (or potential audience), respect their preferred mode of communication and reach out to them in a targeted, conscientious manner, your communications will be exponentially more effective. An additional benefit of this part of the planning process is that once you identify your audience, solutions become infinitely more clear.

Thanks for getting this conversation going

I’ll write the post tomorrow and post it for Wednesday.

Nice post! I especially love the concept of bringing three big ideas to the table. Depending on time, it also might be interesting to ask each participant or department to do the same.

I totally agree with involving people outside the communications area in the initial planning process. Not only do you invite fresh perspectives and interesting ideas, you also encourage teamwork among different departments who often end up being responsible for some facet of execution.

Based on my experience, I would let the communications team ‘host’ the meeting. I would clarify the meeting is simply to generate ideas — not to decide which idea(s) will be used. After brainstorming, the communications team needs to sift through the ideas to determine those with the best potential for success against the budget. (A follow-up meeting presenting the actual plan to the original brainstorming team is always great, too.)

I agree with Arik on utilizing an outside meeting facilitator to keep the ideas flowing. Too often, I’ve seen such meetings deteriorate into ego battles and old squabbles, especially if the person leading the meeting is someone people want to impress, such as the CEO or other key executive.

Another nice touch is to designate one person to record the ideas so that the group can stay creatively focused. And all ideas should be recorded – even those doomed to that great parking lot in the sky.

Can’t wait to read your post tomorrow!

Thanks again. It’s all good!
Jenifer @jenajean

1–Consider the environment of your planning sessions. You’re looking for big ideas right? Sometimes, that conference room you’ve been holed up in for most of your natural born life isn’t the best place to conjure up that idea that’s going to “wow” the client. What about an off-site meeting? What about getting together at a non-traditional venue (art museum, bowling alley, etc). You might be surprised what a change of venue can do for your thinking.

* Bring in some outside “talent.” Ever think about bringing in someone to facilitate an improve session with you staff? Sounds ridiculous, but improv can help you think more creatively–and more quickly. Two skills that are absolutely crucial to our success as counselors. Or, what about bringing in a musician or songwriter to talk about their craft? The idea: Get your brain thinking in different ways. That usually has a tendency to benefit the client

Great thoughts on planning. I especially like your suggestion to get the right people in the room and Scott’s idea on building a Dream Team.

My experience suggests that sometimes the best ideas are a mix of new innovation and proven classic methods of communication. Although we have to stay on the cutting edge, we also have to remember that sometimes a simple approach is best.

I also think that a vital member of our dream team is someone to play the devil’s advocate. We always need someone to challenge our ideas and plans to keep us striving to make our best plans better.

Thanks for addressing my original argument per your third point in this post (re: Show how the ideas can come to life *outside* of your fiefdom and across the marketing mix.) You were right in that my main problem was actually the illustration of the point, rather than the point itself.

I completely agree with you that showing clients how a communications plan fits outside of their world of business is a fantastic idea. Too often, we see companies and clients only looking at their world of the business spectrum and wanting to know how a PR/communications plan will help them advance in that world. That is a good thought to have as an over-arching reason to have a strong PR plan, but there definitely needs to be some rather frank and open discussion about what a strong PR plan can do for a company in terms of opening that company up to new customers and clients from outside of its own spectrum of an industry.

I really think that in today’s always-tuned-in world, many clients could benefit from looking outside of their current niche of an industry and thinking more big picture. How can we find new clients and customers that are outside of our current industry or business, but may benefit from our products, services or expertise? If you can get a client to think about that and then put those thoughts into action through some part of a PR plan, then I think you have really strengthened the overall scope and success of a plan, not just for the short term, but through the next growth market and subsequent recessions, etc.

Thanks for addressing my points … looking forward to reading your new post soon about this!

Keith

One thing I would add to this is the NEED TO CHECK YOUR EGO AT THE DOOR. Some of the *best* ideas I have come upon have come from the most unlikely suspects…and these would have never come about had the team thought, “Oh, that person can’t come up with anything that could work b/c he/she doesn’t know enough about the industry…”

HOGWASH

When you check your ego at the door, you
* open yourself up to new ideas
* open yourself up to new people
* open yourself up to actually admitting when things go wrong (go figure)
* make yourself soo much more easy to approach with new ideas