Some of the most brilliant plans and strategies never get implemented. The problem is often communicating the strategy in a simple and easy to understand manner to a lot of people with different opinions, knowledge levels and responsibilities. As plan creators we need to think about our internal audience in the same way as we think about customers. They have to get and like our message and see benefit in implementing it.

My approach to this challenge is to boil down the plan document to a single page that can be shared and understood by the whole organisation. I then put a lot of effort into marketing it internally. As one of my more memorable bosses frequently said, “If my granny can’t understand your plan you ain’t got a plan”.