OK, maybe that was extreme. If used properly, communication plans can be very effective.

If your actions are driven by people’s questions, concerns, hopes, and needs, at any given time, they can work. But, if tasks are triggered by dates on a calendar, you are bound to fail. The key is focusing on the people not the plan.

Here’s the problem. You create a communication plan. You are going to send out a memo one week, have some town hall meetings a few weeks later, a squeeze bottle giveaway a few weeks after that, and a live demo/trade show after that, etc. Sounds good right?

Well, what happens if people didn’t agree with the memo? Maybe it turned them off. Maybe they are so demotivated that they aren’t going to the Town Hall meeting. Worse yet, perhaps they did go and were put off even more by what you had to say. You are really relying a lot now on that water bottle to bring them around.

Change management isn’t a linear process defined by tasks and communication events. Change management is an iterative process defined by how successfully you are moving people from a state of discomfort and non-acceptance to a state of comfort, acceptance, and success.

Memos, giveaways and focus groups don’t guarantee that people are any more ready for the change than when you started. People’s thoughts, feelings and beliefs don’t conform neatly to a schedule.

Actions should be driven by user needs, not workplans.

Instead of setting dates for your deliverables, set dates for where you need people to be in your change journey. A common set of “people” milestones that I like to use is awareness, attention, ability, and achievement.

Create criteria for each of those categories that will tell you whether your workforce has met them. Then create a scorecard to track those criteria and drive your actions.

For this type of scorecard, you can’t track your progress only based on what actions you’ve completed. You will also need to be getting feedback from your users about how they are responding to those actions.

You may need to send two additional follow up memos if the first two didn’t achieve their objective. Or, you may have to forego the water bottles and schedule a second town hall.

Tracking in this manner provides a basis for your actions and their timing. Sometimes you may have to loop back two or three times before everyone is on board. That’s OK. That’s what change management is about.

A successful change effort isn’t measured by the number of actions that were completed on time. It is based on the speed and effectiveness at which you make people successful.