How to approach your communications strategy
I always promised myself I wouldn’t be the triathlete who only ever talks about triathlon. And yet, here we are. One of the lessons I’ve learned more recently is that a coach’s approach to building a training program for an athlete has a lot in common with good communications planning.
Training plans work in layers. There’s the macrocycle, which is the whole year. There’s the mesocycle, which breaks that year into months. And there’s the microcycle, which breaks each month into weeks. Every layer has its own goal, and the smaller layers only make sense because of the bigger one sitting above them.
You start at the top. Before you plan a single week, you figure out what the year is actually for. What’s the race you’re building toward. What matters most. And this is the part people usually get wrong: you also decide when your off-season is going to be. When you’re leaning all the way in, when you’re backing all the way off, and how you move between the two without wrecking yourself in the process.
That off-season isn’t a break from the plan. It is the plan. It’s the reason the hard push after it actually works.
Once the year is mapped out, you break the season into months. Each month gets a smaller, sharper goal. But that goal only earns its place if it’s still pulling toward what you set out to do for the whole year. A mesocycle that’s disconnected from the macrocycle is just busywork with a finish line attached. You won’t PR.
Then you go smaller again. Each month breaks into weeks, and each week has a job to do. This is where the actual training happens, the runs and rides and swims. But none of it means much without the bigger layers giving it a reason to exist.
Here’s what I’m relearning this year in particular. Plans move. You get injured. Life gets in the way. You’re moving slower than you hoped and have to let go of a goal you were excited about a month ago. Or—miracle!—the opposite happens and you string together six good pain-free runs and realize a goal you’d written off might actually be within reach.
A plan that can’t handle that isn’t a plan. It’s a wish with a spreadsheet.
I think there’s something here for the fall, for whatever you’re building this year. A children’s ministry program. A capital campaign. Your own growth as a communicator, whatever that looks like for you right now.
Start with the macrocycle. What’s the year actually for. What’s the one message everything else should trace back to. And be honest with yourself about when your off-season needs to happen. When will you scale back your communications?
Then figure out your mesocycles, the months with their own smaller goals that still serve the bigger one. And your microcycles, the weeks where the real work gets done.
When things shift, because they will, let the plan bend instead of snapping. Scale something back without calling it a failure. Notice when you’re ahead of where you thought you’d be and let that change what’s possible.
Most communications plans skip straight to the microcycle. Weekly posts. Weekly emails. Weekly something, with no macrocycle underneath giving any of it a reason to exist. Fix that first. It only starts to make sense—and make an impact—when there’s actually something to build toward.
Go disrupt something,
Christen
