What are playbooks?

There’s a playbook for that. Weaving together policies, operations, and resources, corporate playbooks are quick how-to guides to bring someone into the loop. These materials are being used to educate new joiners, summarise strategies, or communicate new processes. 

Imported from the US, playbooks are typically short-form and typically include visuals, checklists, and multiple avenues of achieving the end state.

Playbooks are different from manuals. They offer specific ways of a completing a task, whereas manuals are general instructions and trouble-shooting guides.

Playbooks in action

Transformation is tricky for most organisations and having a playbook to navigate helps with the adjustment. Empower, the digital agency, incorporated a social media playbook as part of the successful digital strategy. Working with Amnesty UK, Empower researched and experimented with different perspectives within the operational teams.

The resulting playbook offered unfamiliar colleagues a summary of the social media outreach programme, online style, media specific advice and reporting. Empower outline why playbooks are successful: “Crucially, the playbook can be used by anyone in their organisation to help plan, produce and execute social media content.”

Drafting the essential charity playbook

Creating an essential playbook means beginning with the ‘minimum viable product’ or MVP. Debunking the consultant’s terminology, the playbook should start small and expand when needed. Here we look at some top tips to create a charity playbook.

Research on ‘the problem’

The reason for creating a playbook could be the start of a new process, integration, or to solve a problem. Always ensure that you define the problem first – and build from there.  

Determine the kind of playbook

Now that there’s an identified issue to solve, Indeed, the recruitment site, suggests classifying the type of playbook and gives a few potential options:

• Company: An overview of the organisation, mission, and activities
• Operations: Materials detail how to perform tasks or services on behalf of organisation
• Sales: Lets staff know how to market the products externally
• Channel: Explain to third parties how to deliver a service or product to other customers

Determine your audience

Figure out who you’re speaking to. Tailor the playbook to resonate with its intended audience, be it new recruits, staff, or external stakeholders, ensuring relevance and engagement.

Provide actionable steps

While addressing the MVP, the other topics to note are the types of decisions to be made. Plan B Consulting notes that actions need to be considered. Who should be notified? What processes need to be followed? How will the incident be communicated?

For an operational playbook relating to IT, one scenario the playbook could address is what to do if a ransomware attack happened. Whereas for a sales guide, what to do in case the payments systems shut down might be included.

Add performance metrics or outcomes

Best practice for playbooks includes targets, KPIs, and outcomes. Playbooks link processes with what the ambitions should look like. In an ESG playbook, for example, a guide on how to reduce energy consumption should be connected to the overall footprint of the charity.

Make it digital

Ensuring that the content is easily digested and widely accessible means making it digital. Our top tip is to use different types of media to make it interesting. In general, incorporate live examples or screen shots of what to do so that the playbook can be used in real time.

Don’t forget to use interactive content so audiences can engage. 

Make it scalable

To futureproof the playbook, make it flexible and scalable.

Content designers will want to ensure that there is flexibility. Regularly assess the playbook for its usefulness and update it appropriately. Version control is a must.

Our top tip is a donation playbook

Our final tip is to create a donation playbook. For charity workers, the playbook should focus on how to generate and process donations. Likened to a sales playbook, a charity donation playbook takes staff through from asking for donations to trouble shooting.

Forbes shows powerful examples of what to cover in a playbook. They start by identifying personas and then build upon an organisation’s unique product or proposition. There’s also linkage to KPIs so that staff are aware of how their efforts contribute to the overall mission.