The next step, and really the last one before you can start building the actual playbook and plays, is to determine the technical approach and tool you'll use to do so. The key here is to determine which tool will be easiest for your audience to use, and then which tool is easiest for you and your key contacts in other teams to maintain over time. There are probably other ways to build them, but I have built playbooks using almost all of the options listed below.
Document. Whether you use Microsoft Word, Google Docs, or something else, and whether you maintain your documents in native format or convert to Adobe PDF, this is a very straightforward approach that will be readily familiar to you and your audience. These can be even more useful when you leverage built-in content structuring capabilities like sections, headers, tables of content, indexes, etc.
Presentation. Similar to documents, you can use Microsoft PowerPoint, Google Slides, or whatever similar tool you want. This takes a little more planning due to the limited space for text on each slide. I’ve approached this by having the play title and description on the slide and everything else in the slide notes. You should also take advantage of these tools’ ability to hyperlink to individual slides to build a table of contents, but again you’ll need to plan this out.
Spreadsheets. I would not encourage using these for a final playbook, because I don't find them as easy to navigate as documents or presentations. But I leverage them to gather resources and RACI charts, and I keep my master list of plays as a spreadsheet that I can then edit down and save for a particular project.
Wiki. Wikis are very easy to edit, which is a good thing, but they tend to be harder to keep organized over time, and organizations don’t use them nearly as much today as they did 15-20 years ago so there may be a bit more learning curve involved.
Playbook tools. There are a few tools in the market that are built to develop and maintain playbooks. I won't include any in this article because the market is pretty fluid, and because I haven't used any of them.
The primary question to consider is whether the sophistication of the tool offsets the additional cost, and perhaps more importantly, the need to switch focus and context to yet another tool.
Learning management system. There are many learning management systems available, and they are often optimized for managing and delivering content relevant to a particular topic or lesson. They also generally include links to additional resources, further reading, etc. Most of them are also inherently multimodal - that is, they leverage video, images, and other rich media and can often display things like flowcharts and other types of content.
The challenge here is similar to the bespoke playbook tools – whether the additional sophistication is worth the additional cost and complexity to build and maintain the plays.
Knowledge base. Similarly, many organizations have some sort of a knowledge base or knowledge management tool that manages all the information about a particular topic or task. And the challenges are the same as those with playbook tools and learning management systems.
Intranet. Some intranet platforms make the process of creating and updating individual pages and topics very simple. Many of these also offer support for rich media such as videos or flowcharts. This is a great way to build a highly useful and engaging playbook – if your intranet platform supports it.
My most recent playbook project involved building one in Microsoft SharePoint Online. The playbook was its own site; the table of contents was the landing page. Each section of the playbook was given its own section on the landing page with a list of the plays in each section, and each play was its own page complete with flowcharts, links to resources, etc.
Again, what tool and approach you use should be whatever your users find easiest to access, and whatever you find easiest to maintain.
In the next installment, we'll talk about the process for drafting the individual plays, including an exploration of each of the elements included in a play.
I teach a workshop on how to build playbooks. You can find more details about the course and approach at https://athroconsulting.com/?page_id=981.
I also build RIM and IG playbooks for organizations - drop me a note at jesse.wilkins@athroconsulting.com and let's talk about what that could look like.
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