How Plan International UK defined its thought leadership strategy through workshops
Although Plan International UK had plenty of communications expertise in-house, defining its thought leadership strategy had proved somewhat challenging.
The organisation had spent more than a year trying to develop its approach internally, but had still not landed on a clear direction. For a team working across advocacy, campaigning and fundraising, with numerous stakeholder groups to consider, finding a practical starting point had become increasingly vital.
When Laura MacLeman, Head of Strategic Communications and Content, started looking for external help, she spotted that Remedy was not just trying to sell execution, but offered a dedicated workshop-led approach.
“I liked Remedy’s idea of workshops that would help us define our approach. It would be a self-contained project that would give us an anchor deck, that we could take forward.”
Remedy designed a custom two-stage thought leadership workshop programme to help the Plan International UK team find its direction. The first workshop brought senior leaders together to explore what thought leadership should mean for the organisation, who it needed to influence and where its voice could have the greatest impact. The result was a clear topical theme on which thought leadership could be built.
The second workshop focused more on activation and implementation, so widened the conversation. It involved colleagues from multiple departments to find ways together to turn strategic thinking into practical action, spanning messaging, channels, content ideas and cadences.
One of the most useful developments was a deeper and more disciplined view of audiences. Laura reflected: “We explored the different levels of stakeholder engagement in much more depth than we had before… The workshop helped us to prioritise where our voice would have the most impact.” That sharper audience thinking helped the team cut through complexity and identify a more focused centre of gravity for future activity.
The work also broadened Plan International UK’s view of what thought leadership could actually look like. Laura said: “We’d previously seen thought leadership as mainly about building our CEO’s profile and presence, but Remedy helped us to see far more broadly.”
Following the workshops, Laura and the team received an Anchor Deck which captured not just the chosen central theme but the audience priorities, storytelling pillars and practical next steps.
This created a valuable shared understanding and usable roadmap that the Plan International UK team could build on.
