PR’s Top Pros Talk… How to Plan and Prioritize Communications Initiatives

Planning and prioritizing communications initiatives is crucial to any business, but how can you do it effectively? Stacey Jones, Chief Communicator at Honeywell, shares her process for assembling the right team. She explains how to gain the trust of the C-suite when developing new strategies. Stacey also shares the importance of connecting communications plans to business objectives.

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TRANSCRIPT:

DOUG: Stacey, you’re fairly new to this position, so how did you approach the planning and prioritizing communications tasks when you’re starting in such a significant role with an organization?

STACEY: Doug, that’s a great question. And first of all, thanks for having me join you today. I really appreciate the chance to talk about this new role, and also just about the industry and our profession at large. As you pointed out, I am new. I’m just about ready to cross the seven-month mark at Honeywell. And it’s been an incredible action-packed seven months. We have realigned our businesses. Announced in October with three global megatrends: automation, the future of aviation, and energy transition. So that is a gift to a communicator, right? To come in and be part of that realignment right from the beginning. We purchased Carrier’s global security solutions business, so that was nice to be right in the live action of a large M&A $5 billion acquisition. So, as all that unfolded and I got to know my new team around the world and really roll my sleeves up and work with them, I found that planning was really an incredible tool that helped us all define our North Star, what we were going to do to get there, and the specific actions that we would take, as well as our new messaging that helped bring these megatrends to life. And while they’re very familiar areas to Honeywell, we had never declared that our alignment with these would run across our business. And it was a new way to talk about the company, which was great to define together. And going through that process and again, sitting side by side, rolling sleeves up, was really essential to helping me get in the role, understand the makeup of the company, and how we want to plot our future together. But we are still in the process of transforming and here at Honeywell, it’s all about growth. So that’s what we’re aiming for.

DOUG: I mean, that’s really exciting. It also brings up sort of an historic challenge slash opportunity for communicators, because sometimes you’re trying to figure out what can be a story and how do you bring the people together. Other times you’ve got these huge stories that you’re navigating. So how do you manage to keep time for the planning and consistency process when you’ve got these large events and transitions happening?

STACEY: Well, Doug, I think you nailed it. Communicators are often building the plane while they’re flying it. So, it’s, I think, part of our DNA. It’s part of what we do well. But as a leader, one thing that I was really intent upon is I got to know the teams was having time for planning and really carving that out, making it a very disciplined effort. And in standing it up, there were a couple of folks on my senior team. I said, who would like to help take a leadership role? This isn’t Stacey doing all the planning and, you know, collecting it all. This is us doing it together. And I had a couple of very talented people put their hands up and say, I really want to play a key role in this. I want to work side by side. I want to keep this momentum going across the team, and that made a big difference. I think if you’re planning alone or planning in a very small group over to the side, you’re probably not going to land where you need to with all the input. Obviously, we’re a very geographically diverse company as well, and really having all this lenses on the planning process and the discipline behind it to make the journey together helped put us in a place for 2024 that I think feels really solid. And now we get to the really fun part of executing some of the things that we had written down in January and early February.

DOUG: Yeah. So in terms of dividing up responsibilities, I mean, that was one technique like, hey, opt in, give me a show of hands so we can make this happen. What are some of the other ways that leaders can be effective in dividing responsibility?

STACEY: I think another aspect of that is really knowing the strengths of your team. Who will be good at what, who has the bandwidth to take XYZ project on, and who maybe also needs to learn in a slightly more, you know, junior position and be paired with some senior individual? So, it’s actually the strength of that teaming and the ability maybe not just as one leader, but as a leadership team, to look across the group and to look across the business. You know, certainly, comms is essential to comms planning and driving the plan, but if we’re not involving business leaders, our chief strategy officers, our business heads themselves to get input along the way, then we’re also missing a key component of the planning. In the end, we certainly don’t want any of it to be a surprise, and taking our colleagues along with us and making adjustments based on their input or things that they’re planning, that might be additive was also absolutely key to this process. And it was also a great way to get to know people here and understand the priorities is, I think one thing that, you know, naturally comes out of planning are clear priorities and where you should be spending your time.

DOUG: I wanted to ask about the priorities piece because you mentioned there are different business units and sometimes they have different priorities. You know, it’s hard to imagine 100% matched in priority. And then you’ve also got to be putting the entire unit out there as one unit. So how do you gain the trust of all those key participants?

STACEY: Well, I think you hit on just a word that has always been important to communicators, but particularly being new in a role and working alongside a new team not only of communicators, but business leaders, gaining trust is an absolutely essential part of getting investment in the plan and commitment to execute it going forward. And obviously, sponsorship from the top, from your CEO, from your C-suite, making sure that the business understands the importance of the planning you’re doing and that it can’t be done alone, is very helpful to ensure that there’s trust across the organization and throughout the planning process. But the trust, too, is built day by day, you know, hour by hour, action by action. And there’s a saying at Honeywell that I’ve come to be very fond of, and it’s the say, do, and doing what you say, although it seems very simple, but I found that follow through on actions, but for myself and for my team and really that consistency over the weeks and months of pulling through commitments that we’ve made or ideas that we put forward into tangible outcomes, has been very, very essential. And I’ll loop back to one more point, I touched on it, the measurement. So at the end of it all, you know this obviously you want some intuitive reactions and there are optics, but this is an engineering culture. And data is really, really, really important. So, having a data-driven outcome approach is absolutely essential in defining where you want to get, what the KPI’s are, how you’re going to do it better in a more focused way. So, we took this opportunity with, the alignment of the megatrends to our business to actually and this gets back to where you started with a question to actually measure our outcomes across the megatrends. So how are we doing in automation? How is our share of voice adding up? How are we doing in the future of aviation? How are we doing in energy transition? What topics are we addressing in all those? And those are the things we want to be talking about. And is that what we said we’d be talking about when we started this process? So there’s a lot of consistency, both through the planning, the execution. And then the measurement and all this hang together, I think you’ve got a lot better shot at gaining trust in the process, and that everything won’t always go perfectly, and you’re able to course correct and see the data and make decisions that enable the strategy going forward.

DOUG: Do you have a process for making sure that you get buy-in at each step of the way? How do you get that approval?

STACEY: Yeah, Doug, buy-in is so important. And not just the buy-in, but the ideas that come along the path of getting buy-in. And certainly while communications planning is driven by communication, the engagement of stakeholders throughout the process is absolutely essential. A broad group, a diverse group. And then at the end of that pathway, making sure that you have buy-in from the top table and ideally having a discussion around that table. So, you’re looking at it with your colleagues and they are making sure that they can get behind this plan. They’re going to empower their business teams to support this plan. And you have the endorsement of that table to go forward and make all this happen, which is always the most exciting part. But in the process of getting that buy-in and taking it all the way to the top, you learn so much and then everyone’s behind it. So, it’s kind of a soup-to-nuts effort.

DOUG: Yeah. I would also think it’s not just do you approve it, but it’s also getting refined along the way.

STACEY: Absolutely. The refinements are critical. And you might think you have the greatest idea in the world, but you get more information, and that changes it, shapes it, evolves it, and ultimately makes it better.

DOUG: There’s been great information about what organizations should be doing and how they can be planning better to be more effective, but what are some common mistakes? Maybe in this part of the process that communicators can avoid or should avoid?

STACEY: There are so many opportunities and there are also so many challenges along the way, right? Or everyone would be doing this perfectly. I think they’ve probably many, many business books written none on this, but I think the number one thing I see with plans, and not just here at Honeywell, but just throughout my career, is that they’re not grounded as deeply as they should be in the business strategy. So, you know, it’s great to have a comms plan. You absolutely need a comms plan, but the two should have 100% connective tissue in getting the business strategy as up and running and as supported as possible. So, the strategy obviously leads to improving your brand if you get that right. And to improve your brand, you also have to execute external communications. So, there’s absolutely a synergy and a resonance. And recognizing that on the front end is really, really important. Also, I think being honest about how many resources you have to help drive your priorities. You know, very often it’s like a buffet, and I want this and I want this and I want this, and it’s coming from a place of well-intentioned, you know, input, but making sure that planning is a rigorous down select of what is most important to enable that business strategy and what matters most. And, you know, lastly, I’d say just being flexible throughout the planning process, but also after you’ve written the plan, you know, it’s going to change. And being on the lookout for external events, opportunities, and moments that can be aligned and or may reprioritize, you know, some things that you plan several months back. So, that fluidity, being agile, being nimble and, you know, clinging to your plan but not with white knuckles with, a little bit of a loose grip, knowing that you will have to make adjustments throughout the year.

DOUG: One point that you sort of hinted at there that is interesting is you mentioned about understanding the business strategy and having the comms plan deeply embedded in that is the practice and process of going through the comms plan. Can that sometimes inform what the business strategy should be? Can it play a role and is it playing a larger role?

STACEY: I think that it does inform how it comes to life in particular for your stakeholders. So, you know, I’m not saying anything mystical or magical, but knowing what audiences you want to hit and how you want them to receive information, the priority messaging that you want them to hear, there’s a very tight tether between the actual business strategy driving brand value and how you communicate rather externally to make all that happen. I’ve said many times in my life that as soon as you write something down in a news release, it becomes abundantly real. And it does. It forces decisions and it forces a focus that may not otherwise come to the words on the page and words. Words matter. And the ability that communications has to bring that focus and to be there in kind of the final runway when you’re leading up to making a declaration or announcing a big merger, acquisition, being in that last mile delivery is a wonderful experience, but the focus it brings and often the speed it can happen at is something that the comms profession, when done well, it’s a magical process.

DOUG: Thanks so much for spending time with us.

STACEY: Well, it’s been my pleasure. And thank you for your interest in furthering the discipline of what we do every day. It’s important stuff.

DOUG: Awesome. Great stuff. Thank you.