Laura’s Winning Ideas

Beautiful Day Cafe is near my office, a tiny place run by a husband and wife. This morning the buzz there was about their concert last week. The owner and some local geniuses, ginned up high efficiency generators to stationary bikes and decided to host a rock concert. Seven members of the audience provided the power for the amps and lights at a barn concert at their home. After an article in the local paper, the story got picked up around the country and they appeared briefly on Good Morning America.

It made me think about Communication Plans. Communication Planning is for good news as well as bad news.

For many Proposal Professionals, we either ARE or verge on being, the Marketing and PR department of our firms.

What is your communication policy for “special events” that might bring sudden publicity to your firm?

Publicity can be about good things as well as bad things. Every firm should have a communications plan in place. Most of the time these communication plans are designed for emergency response to bad news. An accident at a site where your firm has staff or project responsibility is a good model around which to create your communication plan.

The things often overlooked in these plans are:

First line knowledge of the plan and response: Your executives knowing what the plan is won’t be much good if your receptionist doesn’t know anything about it. In an emergency, anyone in your organization may be the first person contacted. If they don’t know that the firm has a plan, and what their first step should be, they’ll try to “wing it” on their own. No one intentionally becomes Alexander Haig*, they are all just trying to do the best they can in a tense moment.

Morgue of Staff Profiles: Every communication plan includes a profiles of the key executives. However, the plan should include a speedy way to create profiles of anyone in your organization. Here’s where the resume database we use for proposals can become a critical resource for a communication plan.

If your firm needs a communication plan, here are a few first steps:

Outline who should represent the firm, and be sure everyone knows who this person is. Generally, this will not be your president, but in a small firm, the president is often the spokesperson.

You’ll need a briefing book. This contains initial instructions and key information you may need in a hurry. Traditionally the briefing book was updated every quarter, with a copy in your President’s office, the spokesperson’s office and at least one other place in the firm. Today, a secure website might be more effective. Key people would have the URL and login pasted to the bottom of their desk phone and in their handheld device.

Here’s a few things that should be in your briefing book:

Names and phone numbers (work, home, cell) of all managers in the firm.

List of keepers of critical information in an emergency:

• Home contact information: probably Human Resources
• Familiy information: probably Human Resources (does your personnel file allow access to family member information? Often this information is limited to the health insurance forms, which are protected information under HIPAA. Now is the time to figure out how to get access to this type of personal information in an emergency without violating privacy laws. You might need to add a permission in your employment agreement.)
• Client contact information: Maybe Accounts Payable, maybe Sales, maybe Project Summary Database, maybe PR client contact morgue. Find the best resource and be sure they know they are relied on to have the latest information.
• Investor/Board member contact information

A few minutes of research on the web will net lots of examples of communication plans. Steal good ideas liberally.

* Alexander Haig was in the White House when President Reagan was shot. For a few hours, chaos reigned. Mr. Haig, intending to calm a frenzy, was quoted by the press, “I’m in charge here.” and it was badly interpreted to be a usurpation of the transition of power outlined by the U.S. Constitution.