I have been judging IABC Gold Quill awards all day today. I am a big fan of IABC’s Gold Quill program, especially the requirement for an excellent work plan as part of an entry. The work plan shows the strategic planning and management that is the underpinning of an entry. This makes the awards program a professional development experience, not a beauty contest.
Here’s what I want all of my students to get right now: to deal with any important communication/PR issue, there are certain steps that must be taken in order for there to be a credible strategic treatment of the issue.
First, you must conduct research to know all you can about the situation your organization is facing. Intuition and guess work won’t cut it. This is usually captured in a situation analysis. For the Gold Quill work plan, it is listed in the need or opportunity section.
Second, once the need/opportunity is understood, the professional communicator/PR practitioner must decide what to do and recommend a course of action. This is best captured by setting goals and objectives. Goals should be broad-brush statements involving things like improving a relationships with a key public. Objectives are more targeted, for they must manifest a goal into reality.
Here’s the problem: all too often communicators/PR practitioners set squishy objectives, like “communicate that we care about employees” or “inform the community about our …” For an objective to have any relevance, it must be SMART, or Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-sensitive.
Setting measurable objectives is the cornerstone of the strategic communication foundation following research and situation analysis. You simply must set measurable objective in order to be able to conduct meaningful summative evaluation in the end. All too often, squishy objectives can only be followed by summative evaluation that amounts to silliness like, “we got a lot a compliments on the [tactic]” or “the CEO really liked it” or “all of the copies were taken by employees”. These prove nothing.
If you are to claim any meaningful result of your communication/PR strategy and subsequent tactical activity, then you must state clearly and in a measurable way what the activity was to have accomplished in the first place. Make it SMART.
Meaningful, measurable objectives + well-thought-out, appropriate strategy and well-executed tactics = meaningful, measurable results.
Thank you, Lester, for highlighting some very important points that serve not only as a good lesson for your students but also as a good reminder for us professionals.
I love the way you have discussed measurable objectives in the context of strategic communication. In fact, as you know, I do the same thing in the manual I recently updated for Ragan Communications, “Prove Your Worth: The Complete Guide to Measuring the Business Value of Communication.” You simply can’t tack on measurement as an afterthought. It absolutely must be considered from the very beginning as part of a strategic approach to communication.
Les, the SMART acronym is so helpful!
A strong foundation is the key to an efficient and effective work plan. If the research is not conducted or conducted incorrectly it will trickle throughout the work plan deeming it invalid.
The research conducted must be adequate and appropriate so it can be analyzed to implement in a work plan. The work plan should clearly identify the strategic planning and management actions that reflect the intentions and expertise of the practioners who will be executing the plan. For any important communication or PR issue the steps and details of the work plan should be both explanatory and prescriptive. It should be explanatory so the best course of action relies on reason from research. It should also be prescriptive so the work plans words can be easily understood and translated into action.
The work plan should never be entirely descriptive because that presents a superficial solution that hinders all parties involved.
Robert, your book is a must-read for students and practitioners alike. You have a unique way of making a complex subject accessible to us all.
Elyse, you continue to amaze and delight me. “Explanatory and prescriptive” — what sound thinking. When you speak of a “work plan” you are speaking of a strategic communication plan as well. Thank you for your insight.
Les
Les,
I think it is so interesting how you use a SMART approach to writing objectives of a plan. As a student in a public relations plans course, my peers and I often are criticized about how our objectives aren’t measurable or doesn’t present a cause and effect. The SMART technique you have here is the perfect and simple way to make sure the objective will be effective.
Thanks for sharing and I will share it with my class!
Eileen
Les,
Coming up with a measurable objective is a major struggle for PR Plans students, myself included. I appreciate your SMART acronym because it highlights an often overlooked aspect of measurable objectives, and that is time-sensitivity. I believe actively thinking about time-sensitivity will help eliminate many vague, difficult to measure objectives, as it seems those are the ones that have no real time-constraint on them. I would also like to offer a helpful approach to creating SMART objectives that I have learned in my plans class, and that is to structure your objective in three distinct parts: 1. The action, 2. Who is performing the action, 3. So they can do what? The most important and often forgotten part is number three. By clearly identifying what you want your focus to do, you have created for youself an object of measurement. Ex: To motivate 1500 people to commit to serving as volunteers… Here, while the number 1500 automatically gives you a measurable goal, you also have an action you want your focus to do, and that is make commitments. Rather than saying recruit 1500 volunteers, you nail down the action you want performed and thus help ensure your objective can be measured. Thanks for another useful post, Les!
Lisa Poplawski