Pilot2Service Stakeholder Communication Plan
Purpose
Builds a communication plan for different stakeholders during a change.
Anchored in research
- LinkedIn Skills on the Rise 2026 — Executive & Stakeholder Communication
- Hiatt, Jeff / Prosci — the ADKAR model (Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, Reinforcement): communication objectives shift over the course of a change effort, and a message that's right for building Awareness is the wrong message for driving Reinforcement.
- Mendelow (1991) — the Power/Interest stakeholder grid, used to decide the intensity and directness of communication for each stakeholder segment.
Method
- Segment stakeholders by power and interest (Mendelow) — this determines communication intensity and directness per group, not just who gets an email versus who gets a meeting.
- Map each segment's current position on the ADKAR curve (Awareness → Desire → Knowledge → Ability → Reinforcement). A stakeholder who isn't yet aware of the change needs a different message than one who already knows about it but hasn't bought in.
- Define, per segment: objective, key message, channel, cadence, and owner. The objective should be the specific ADKAR gap that segment is at (build awareness / build desire / build ability / etc.), not a generic "keep informed."
- Sequence the messages against the change timeline — early messages build awareness and the case for change; messages closer to go-live shift toward ability and readiness; post-go-live messages reinforce the change and prevent backsliding.
- Build in a feedback loop per segment — a way for the message to travel back (Q&A, a pulse survey, sponsor office hours), not just outward broadcast. A plan with no return channel can't detect resistance early.
- Name a single owner per message-channel pair who is accountable for it actually going out — a plan nobody owns doesn't get executed.
What this skill does NOT do
- Doesn't make the final decision for you — it produces a structured draft to support a human decision.
- Doesn't confirm figures, market data, or competitor data from memory — it
uses the inputs you provide, or marks an assumption clearly
(
[assumption — verify]). - Doesn't execute the communication for you — it produces the plan and the message framework.
Refinement notes
Areas to keep deepening with real practice:
- your own rules of thumb and heuristics for this technique
- concrete templates (into
../../references/) - reference cases / your own examples
- what this skill deliberately does not do (guardrails, common mistakes) — add to the list above
This is an internal working note, not a claim about the skill's current
usability. Track depth privately via the maturity field in
skills_index.json (see
../../../meta/maturity_levels.md).
Don't add new fields to the frontmatter — name and description are
the only ones allowed (see
../../../meta/frontmatter_schema.md).
Continue from here
- Next in this pack:
../workshop-and-facilitation-design/SKILL.md— Designs the structure of a cross-functional workshop or design-thinking session. - Before this, for a single high-stakes decision-maker:
../stakeholder-pressure-and-information-gap-mapping/SKILL.md— this skill segments and sequences messaging across a change timeline; that skill closes the information gap with one specific decision-maker before a pitch or business case is written. - A ready-made skill chain for this situation: see
../../../playbooks/ - This pack's shared guardrails:
../../CLAUDE.md
References
../../references/— the pack's shared background material../../CLAUDE.md— the pack's shared guardrails