Q “During a recent transformation, I was asked to assist in creating an internal communications plan. Does anyone have a template for an effective plan? External plans are quite plentiful; however, internal plans are hard to come by. Thank you for any assistance that you may be able to render.”

This recent request in the Organizational Change Practitioners LinkedIn group is one of the most common questions internal communicators face. (At the time of writing this, the WikiHow entry “How to create a communication plan” has had over 180,000 views.)

First, the bad news: There is no magic ‘template’ for internal and change communication planning. Sure, we know that a plan will have some common elements such as goals, timings, messages, tactics and responsibilities. But having worked with diverse organisations implementing many different changes, I’ve discovered there are some variables that make a single template hard to apply.