Before you jump into the template, give all your key people some homework. Ask them to take some time alone to brainstorm who your audiences are. From downstream teams to your executive sponsor, who are you communicating with on a regular basis? Give everybody a few days to generate their own list. Then pull the team together to hash out the plan.

Using the Goals section of the template, give everybody some context and clarity by outlining your objectives for your stakeholder communications plan. This should go beyond a surface-level goal like “communicate better” (duh, right?), and dig into the real achievements you’re seeking. Do you want to build greater trust with your stakeholders? Reduce the bottlenecks you’re experiencing? Decrease errors? Jot those objectives down before moving onto the rest of the template.

Have an open discussion about the audiences you each identified and create a main list. Jot them down in the left column of the Stakeholders table.

In the right column, list the communication methods you’re currently using with each stakeholder. Do you primarily use email to communicate with your board of directors and instant messages to communicate with partner teams? Note those specifics here.

Now choose one of your stakeholders and then start with this simple question: how often should you be communicating with this audience?

For example, if your board of directors only needs a monthly update, plot them in the Audience column next to the row labeled “monthly.” Move through the other columns of the table to map out the details for your board. What methods will you use? What should you share with them? Add in any handy links that you may want to refer back to or share with your audience in the template so that everything is in one place. Rinse and repeat for all of your stakeholders.

You might not get your entire stakeholder communications plan ironed out in one meeting – and that’s okay. The Open actions section of the template has space for you to list anything that still needs to be done.

For example, maybe you’re going to look into a designated platform that makes it easier to streamline communication with external vendors. List that in this section as an open action item, so that you actually remember to do it. 

Want an even deeper dive into how to use this stakeholder communications plan? Check out this play.