We all face this sort of challenge at work and at home and there are many potential analogies – a football team that takes one game at a time to eventually win a league, a knitting circle of friends that together creates the world’s biggest blanket, or even a party organiser pulling together all the different elements for a successful wedding or anniversary event.

The main factor for success each time is to look carefully at the resources you have available and decide how they can be best deployed before developing a plan. That’s exactly how we managed the work when a national NHS organisation asked us to rewrite and expand a brochure.

The first issue listed basic information on 50 local organisations and groups of organisations acting as ‘vanguards’ in a national programme delivering NHS service innovations. The second version needed to contain much more detail, have coherent copy delivered with one ‘voice’ throughout and include two case studies for each of the 50 vanguards, with a comment from a clinician and a patient in each one.

With just a couple of months to deliver a completed product, we began by breaking the project down into its component tasks and looking at the skill sets that would be needed for each one – from project management and copywriting to administration and proofreading. We then allocated the tasks to appropriate people in the team with relevant deadlines attached.

Breaking the project down

Firstly, we needed to speak to the 50 vanguards to get the information we needed to write the 100 case studies. Travelling the country for face-to-face meetings simply wasn’t practical – or in the budget. So, we worked with the central communications team to share our details with the communications leads in each of the 50 areas, explain the project, and ask them to check and update their information, outline the case studies that we could write up and provide contact details for the relevant clinicians and managers.

Members of our team who focus on administration dealt with this part of the puzzle, and then interviewed contacts from each area over the phone using a question template produced by our writers.

Our writers then crafted the copy for each case study, asking occasional supplemental questions by email or phone when necessary. They ensured the copy was standardised and consistent, that it was well written and accessible (by using plain English and minimising jargon), and that it fitted the design template for the brochure in terms of sections and word counts.

The admin team then picked up the approvals process as the case studies were completed, so that our writers could continue their focus on the rest of the copy.

Our internal task management system enabled us all to keep track of who was doing what and when, ensuring the project progressed smoothly.

By keeping a tight rein on the organisational side of things we delivered the project on time after working with hundreds of contacts across the country. And we did this all remotely, working with the central communications team in London; our team in Nottingham and Cheshire, and of course the vanguard teams all over the country.

Top tips

Based largely on our experience from working on this brochure, here are our top tips for managing a complex project:

• Look at the project as a series of steps and allocate each task to the right person.
• Be realistic about timescales.
• If the deadline is fixed and you don’t have the capacity to deliver on time, consider whether you could increase that capacity – is there another team that could get involved or could you commission some external support?
• If you do expand your capacity, think about how the work is done – do people really need to be in the office or could they work remotely (thereby saving time and money on travelling)?
• Keep your project planner up to date so that you can quickly identify any problems. Encourage your team to have the confidence to flag up any issues or concerns as soon as possible so you can juggle interim deadlines or reassign tasks as needed to keep the project on track. As the old saying goes, a stitch in time saves nine, and the sooner you address a problem the quicker it will be solved.
• Don’t forget the day job. Big projects often go one of two ways: they either get pushed to the back of the queue by urgent day-to-day tasks, or they overwhelm a team so that the daily jobs are forgotten. If either of these is happening, consider whether you can get support with one element or the other. If you have an ongoing relationship with an agency they might even be able to take the day-to-day work off your hands so you can focus on the project. (We have often stepped into communications teams to help in this way.)
• Take each day at a time even when a project is ongoing for months – and don’t leave anything to the last minute!

For help in planning and delivering a project that needs ‘taking down to size’, contact us today.