CorpComms Magazine

1) Coordinate, coordinate, coordinate

Once teams are briefed and in place to work on the announcement, decide how often you need an update meeting or conference call. It might be weekly initially and daily in the run-up to announcement day. There may need to be more than one call depending on the different time zones involved.

2) Make meetings productive

Don't make update calls unwieldy or overlong. If you must have an agenda, keep it short and stick to the key issues. The chair should start by updating the team on new relevant information. Participants should give concise and relevant status updates and raise issues that need quick decisions. Actions and deadlines should be agreed.

 3) Define who does what

Be clear at the outset who is chairing the update meetings, who is responsible for decision-making, and who the nominated deputy is. Where multiple countries are involved, identify key regional agencies or in-house teams to join the main meetings. Make sure everyone knows who is doing what. It's all too easy to near a deadline and have people saying, 'But I thought someone else was doing that', especially with big teams.

4) Know who to talk to

Who needs to hear from you on day one and who do they need to hear from? Is written communication enough or do they need to hear directly from the CEO? Draw up a stakeholder list and prioritise. Be especially mindful of who is allowed to speak to the media about the announcement; make sure they have the facts and a chat with the right person early on.

5) Negotiate, arbitrate, compromise

Drawing up a stakeholder priority list that everyone agrees on can be tricky, because different parties have different vested interests. Each country thinks its audiences are more important than the other countries'. Matters are complicated when another organisation is involved, such as in M&A and joint ventures. Resolving these conflicts can feel like chairing a session of the UN Security Council, but it's worth putting the effort in to make all parties feel they are being treated fairly.

6) Plan your time

Set out a master plan leading up to announcement day that clearly shows tasks, deadlines and responsibilities. Give someone responsibility for updating the plan and for chasing overdue items. The timetable for announcement day should show what is happening, where, when and who's involved; in very high-profile announcements, this will need to be minute by minute. I've worked on deals where senior journalists were given seven minutes to talk to the CEO, and not a second longer. Give each principal an individual timetable and a specific minder whose job it is to make sure it runs according to plan. The minder must be polite but fairly ruthless; if the timetable starts slipping, it can reflect very badly on the company. You don't want to be late for your own presentation webcast because you had a backlog of frustrated journalists or politicians waiting to speak to you.

7) Release time

Are you or any relevant third parties stock market-listed and in which jurisdictions? What are the requirements in each jurisdiction? Is this announcement material and should it go out before your primary listing market opens? Rio Tinto is dual-listed on the London and Sydney stock exchanges. The announcement that it was offering to pay $38 bn (£18.9 bn) to take over Canadian company Alcan was announced at 7.30 am UK time/4.30 pm Australia time, when both markets were briefly closed. This meant an early start in Canada: the CEO began his day at 3.15 am with a media conference call.

8) Translation

What needs translating? How long does it take? It's generally longer than you think. Give the translators near-final drafts to start on and then send them tracked changes - it saves a lot of time. Ideally, you need a translator who is used to translating your industry's technical terms, otherwise there is scope for misunderstanding.

9) Follow-up session

As soon as it's all over, make another round of calls to gauge initial reaction from the stakeholders and agree any immediate actions to follow up. When there is less time pressure, have a more formal session where everyone can contribute to what worked well, what went wrong and what could be done better next time.

10) Recognise and celebrate success

Make sure you thank all the people who worked on the project and recognise their achievement. It's clearly not practical for teams around the world to get together for drinks after work, but the team leader can personally email thank yous - and forward any from the top executives. A small gift for those who took part is often appreciated, and each team should be encouraged to celebrate locally. Just make sure there's a budget guideline so you don't have one team going bowling while another has a weekend at a luxury hotel.

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