On complex projects, it’s really tempting to create a door stopper of an engagement strategy. The kind that’s so thick it probably rivals the length of the technical studies for the project you’re engaging on.
You’ve probably sweated over it. Laboured over every word. The action timetable corresponded exactly to the strategic intent.
But let’s be honest – if no one reads it, it’s just a door stopper.
An engagement strategy will only be successful if it’s implemented, which means a successful strategy needs to be easily read and understood by non-engagement types. Think of an engineer, or your CEO. Will they be able to digest it easily.
A few unconventional ways to make engagement strategies easy to understand:
- Create an infographic to support it.
- Squeeze the essence into a one-page diagram or table – yes, an A3 is still one page
- Use colour through the strategy to make it easy to find how project stages relate to the engagement stages. Colour acts like a signpost when we’re lost in large documents
- Create a video to explain it
- Make it interactive. There’s amazingly cheap and easy software that allows you to create interactive documents (a bit like a brochure you can click on). It works for those workplaces where you’ve got to work hard to cut through.
