Hold a brainstorming call with a core planning team to set milestones and seek stakeholder input. For distributed projects, plans must be easy to understand and designed for all team members, executives, and non-project managers.
Your first communication about the plan should be as simple as a timeline with expected deliverables at each milestone. Express your information visually so the concepts are easily grasped and organized as much as possible.
Create detailed plans for the first 90 days, then sketch in the next 90. Extend the plan every month and adjust for the long term as needed. Identify the relevant individuals and bring them into the loop in advance if critical approvals or inputs are needed.
With each deliverable, bake in time to review with your team and the executive and tweak as needed. Remember, you are aiming to deliver value, not scope. Thus, the less demanding each deliverable, the more likely you are to reliably show success.