Yes, Chef!

"They want what? By when?" "And nobody thought to contact us earlier?" "What did we do last time?"

Internal communicators live in a cycle of urgent requests that crowds out the strategic work that would prevent them. Local Wisdom's Internal Comms Team Maturity Assessment data shows 40% of internal communicators describe their day as "chaotic and always overwhelmed."

This session offers a way out: pre-packaged communication plans, or "combo meals." The idea comes from fast-food menus, where a hungry person picks a complete meal in seconds and the kitchen gets efficient through focused repetition. Build a menu of communication playbooks, and you match each request to the right one — no reinventing, no negotiating from scratch, no guessing at urgency.

Pinaki walks through the method in two halves. First you inventory what you already have: your channels and segments, the messages you actually send, the scenarios they fall into, and a working definition of what makes something Critical, Major or Minor. Then you mix and match those ingredients into combo meals — numbered, titled playbooks with steps, channels and notes — aiming for a handful that cover roughly 80% of the requests you handle.

Attendees spend part of the session building their own in small groups, using a workbook they keep. The output is an artifact you can take to business partners to set expectations, to your team to build process, and to your future self as the basis for automating the intake.

Delivered on six stages since 2022 — at IABC World Conference, attendees rated it 4.9 out of 5 for new and innovative thinking and 4.75 for value, both above the conference average.