Want to make sure all the resources you devote to developing sound communications strategies pay off? Mind the gap, says Sandra Stewart.

An organization we work with at Thinkshift Communications undertook a newsletter redesign in-house, with the goal of enhancing their expert credentials by providing high-level information to a key audience. When we saw the result, we were floored: lovely design and fine writing, but the content was unlikely to inspire their target audience and failed to deliver key messages.

The only real surprise here is that we were surprised. We were looking at something we see all the time: the gap between strategy and execution.

We're always preaching strategy, and many organizations do have a strategy in place. Yet communications still misfire. Informal polling and our own experience indicate that the top reasons include a familiar triumvirate: lack of time, lack of skills and lack of money. Strategies and their associated tactics need to be run through the reality checker with an honest evaluation of what’s needed to deliver on goals.

Strategy Doesn't End with the Plan

There's a deeper, less-recognized cause of the strategy-execution gap: a failure to engage in execution as a strategic activity. (This was the problem with the newsletter project.) Executing a big-picture strategy involves myriad strategic decisions about virtually every aspect of a communications tool, yet most organizations see strategy and execution as separate rather than interacting endeavors.

Getting the "How" Right

The strategy may be, "We can reach this audience with a newsletter (or whatever) that does X." Therein lies the gap—how will your communications tool do X? It's not always obvious.

Say your strategy is to build credibility by providing expert industry insights. The project lead recruits subject matter experts to write the copy and defers to them on what's important (hey, they're the experts). Will that work? Probably not—unless they’re the rare experts who are good writers, know and write to the audience's knowledge and interests, and can also convey the organization’s work and message. A strong editorial hand is needed to shape the material so it hits those targets, but the project has no editor.

Quality Can Deceive

This kind of breakdown can occur in every aspect of project execution—choice of tool, design, style, content. Professional quality often disguises the problem and compounds it—when results disappoint but there are no obvious flaws, the organization is likely to assume the problem was the strategy and abandon a perfectly good approach. They just don't see the gap between strategy and execution.

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Sandra Stewart, co-founder and principal of Thinkshift Communications, is a content strategist, editorial creative director, and writer/editor.

This article has been reprinted courtesy of SHIFTid, Thinkshift's blog on communications and and sustainability.