Now that you’ve built your team and worked together to identify the strategy, you’ll want to ensure you have a shared vision of what you’re actually creating, and then build a budget and timeline for what it will take to make it happen.
Start this process with a creative brief that captures your shared thinking. Your creative brief captures the purpose, actors, voice and other critical elements. It is a living document that will evolve as you move through this process. Don’t attempt to write the creative brief alone: Make sure each of the people you identified as you built your team have an opportunity to weigh in.
Once you’ve completed a brief for how you want to approach the project, you’ll find it much easier to develop a meaningful budget for the project that incorporates research, design and production, but also writing and creative support. You’ll want to take particular note of where you may need to draw on external resources and talents for which you want to budget, and also create a timeline with space for meaningful inclusion of a range of perspectives and content and what will likely be a more complex approval process.
Use this budget worksheet to anticipate the expenses associated with this project. Again, you’ll want to ensure that each of the people you’ve identified as having a role in the effort has an opportunity to weigh in before you finalize your budget.
Once you’ve used the budget development process to think through the project, you’ll create a development timeline that includes space to incorporate a wide range of talent and expertise, and an approval process. Use this timeline worksheet to plan your project.
Gaining support for an ambitious new way of working requires more than simply passing documents in front of people and asking them to sign off. You’ll want to invest time in thinking about what’s important to them and how what you’re proposing can help them achieve their goals. Use this worksheet to list the resources you’ll need, who controls those resources, and what would make them inclined to provide those resources to invest in this effort.
