Woody Allen is reputed to have said, “Eighty percent of success is showing up.” If what you want to be successful at is communication, I’d bump that up to at least 90 percent.

If your e-letter doesn’t arrive in the inbox or the newsletter doesn’t arrive in the mailbox, people forget about you. They don’t call you when they need you, volunteer when you need them, or tell their friends how swell you are.

If people don’t get the annual appeal letter until January or the event invitation until six days before the event, they don’t give and they don’t attend – and you’ve missed an opportunity.

Yes, I live in the same world you live in, the one where everyone has way too much to do and way too little time to do it.

It’s easy to set a publication schedule. The hard part is keeping it.

How to set a publication schedule:

  1. Pick a publication date.
  2. Work backward from the publication date, allowing just a little more than a realistic amount of time for each step.
  3. Share the schedule with everyone who has to work to this schedule. Give them a chance to tell you what’s unrealistic or when they’ll be on vacation.
  4. Revise the schedule accordingly. Try not to eat up all the wiggle room you left in the first draft.
  5. Make everyone sign the revised schedule in blood.

(I remember being hailed as a miracle worker when I presented this kind of schedule at a nonprofit that hired me to put out its monthly newsletter. It’s elementary – unless no one has ever shown you how. If you’d like to learn, contact me.)

How to keep a publication schedule:

1. Just do it.

Seriously, there are no quick fixes.

Your smartest move would be to hire a communications professional for whom setting and keeping a publication schedule is second nature. You need someone who can put a late contributor’s feet to the fire while seeming to offer a pleasant toe-warming experience.

Then give this person – oh, heck, give me – access to the people I need to nag. Give me some back-up: budget authority, knowledge that the boss wants this done, whatever. Then stand back and watch me work miracles.

But that’s my perspective. On the principle that your perspective matters more than mine, I asked a client. This client is the busiest person I know, yet month in and month out she makes the time to work with me to produce an 8-page newsletter for employees in her unit. When asked how she pulls it off, here’s what she said:

  • I carry a notebook to leadership meetings and meetings with my staff so I can keep track of things we should tell employees about.
  • We have a rhythm. After Jan sets the schedule, every month I put on my calendar the two or three times we need to talk. It doesn’t really take that long. I give Jan a framework and let her do her thing.
  • We both keep notes of follow-up items, which ones Jan is going to do and which ones are for me. If it’s complicated, Jan sends an e-mail with a list.
  • I make it a priority. The whole point of our internal communications is to help our employees understand what they can do to help us succeed and how we work to help them succeed. You have to be sure about the purpose of your communication; otherwise why would you set aside time for it?

What can you add to this list? What do you do to ensure that your communications get the time and attention they need to get out there and do what needs to be done?