How Do You Use It?

Tool: Craft Relevant Messages Worksheets

WHAT IS IT?

The Craft Relevant Messages Worksheets, Parts 1 and 2, help you identify areas of focus in communicating your strategic initiative.

WHY USE IT?

Use these worksheets to identify the most relevant messages about your strategic initiative to communicate to your people and to ensure you communicate the messages in a compelling way.

HOW DO YOU USE IT?

1.Begin by defining your initiative’s current and future states.

2.Put yourself in your people’s shoes and assess how they will view the impact of your strategic initiative, by comparing the benefits and drawbacks of the current state with the benefits and drawbacks of the future state.

3.Based on your assessment, review the six Clarity Questions and identify the ones that require the most attention as you communicate your initiative—as well as your relevant messages.

REMEMBER

• Typically, several groups of people will be impacted by your initiative. Complete these worksheets as needed, to consider different groups and different perspectives.
• You may not need to deliver a relevant message to answer each one of the six Clarity Questions. Focus on the questions whose answers will be most important to your people. Typically, the answers that will make the greatest impact on your people are the most important.

Craft Relevant Messages Worksheet, Part 1

Identify What Is Relevant

Choose one group or set of stakeholders to focus on. Take its perspective as you complete Steps 1 and 2 below.

Selected Stakeholder Group: ______

Step 1: Describe the group.
Current State / Desired Future State
Step 2: Reflect on these questions and identify the benefits and drawbacks of the current and future states.

• How will your initiative affect the group’s day-to-day work?
• What will be different?
• What aspects of the initiative will be seen as positive?
• What aspects will represent challenges for the group?
• What will the group care about?

Current State Benefits / Future State Benefits
Current State Drawbacks / Future State Drawbacks

Craft Relevant Messages Worksheet, Part 2

Create Your Messages

Based on your analysis of benefits and drawbacks in Part 1, craft relevant messages to communicate the importance and value of your initiative to the group you selected.

Clarity Question / Relevant Messages to CommunicateYour Initiative’s Importance and Value
What?
What is your initiative? What will you accomplish by executing it?
Why?
Why are you executing this initiative now? What is the business case for moving from the current state to the desired future state?
Who?
Who will be involved in executing your initiative? Who will make it successful?
How?
How will you actually get it done? What resources—technologies, competencies, and processes—are needed?
When?
When will you execute your initiative? What timelines and milestones have been identified?
Where?
Where will you execute your initiative: within your team, department, business unit, geography—or somewhere else?