We were running a workshop and the teams had gotten their projects up on the walls using flip charts. As I walked around, I saw solid work, but it was short of inspiring – a critical quality in this age of distraction and competition if a project is going to find its way to full adoption.
What was missing was the “why.” Each of these teams had solid and impactful projects in mind, but needed to complete the work of connecting them to the external why’s. They needed to take advantage of our human desires to do great work, compete well, create clarity and leave things better than we found them.
To catch the eye of the senior team, we needed to elevate the viewpoint; and almost as important, capture the emotion and imagination of the “A” players who would be responsible for turning it into reality. The path to implementation is always a long road with significant resistance, and to get there, great ideas need to be able to get above the day-to-day agendas and connect with the full organization.
Geoffrey Moore’s work in crossing the chasm is very real in the work we do in organic innovation and growth. To be successful, our work needs to be quickly embraced by our early adopters, and also have the emotive staying power to be taken up by later waves of the skeptical majority in the firm’s support teams – and then – its clients and customers.
Organic innovation that finds a way forward is in a context that is so compelling that you think about it even when you are not “working” because you know it aligns with something you really want to be identified with.
All the ingredients to accomplish this were already in the room. What we needed was the right way to activate it. Like a combustion chamber in an engine, good projects need to be in the right framework or container to hold sway as they compete for scarce resources of time, attention and talent.
What is fun is that I’ve seen this before and knew the best was right around the corner. After a quick chalk talk, the team dug in and got to work elevating their game.
The Art of Reframing
One of the more eye opening exercises we do in our Right Project, Right Team, Right Plan workshops is when we work on “Reframing” projects. Many times the leaders in these workshops bring forward really solid projects they’ve been considering for a long time, but that didn’t have the sponsorship needed to get on the corporate agenda.
The exercise begins by evaluating the external context of the firm in its current environment including economic, political, social and technological settings. We then use some tools to unlock those areas we are uniquely equipped to respond to. By aligning our work with the world outside of the firm, we are able to find those unique opportunities that are in sync with the needs outside our firm, our strengths inside our firm and our own individual needs to excel.
Once we’ve surfaced these connections, we work hard to apply them so there is a traceable link from our proposal to the key trend or societal need. This builds a powerful emotional chain that leads to projects that have momentum at their core and sets the table for the next phase of the work: helping the leaders catch momentum in their firm
The Big Six
These six questions will help you get the perspective you need to be able to cut through the distracted environment the senior team lives in to help your project gain traction and footing.
#1: What exactly are you proposing?
In our workshops we spend time creating a rock solid statement that is structured around the from, to and toward:
- Who exactly are we serving?
- What is the insight that led to this work?
- How exactly is it done now, what will happen immediately after you are complete, and how does it set you up for the future?
You need to be very crisp about what changes need to be completed and who is involved to ensure all the interactions have been accounted for. This will ensure that you are ready to crisply (and without jargon) talk with not only those familiar with your work, but also those more casual, but important stakeholders.
#2: What are your proof points?
Many projects are strong on the “what” and very weak on the “why” and “how” we know it works. To satisfy the need to meet this objective hurdle, you need to be able to make your case on facts:
- How specifically have you validated your change?
- How close to real life were you able to simulate in your work?
- Were you able to validate it with real-world clients and customers?
- What does the supply chain, sales and distribution say?
#3: What is the box score?
You would be surprised how many proposals fall short in answering the question of how this affects our portfolio. Any adverse impacts both internally and to the client base need to be addressed head on:
- What does the business case look like?
- What will the paybacks be?
- What have we learned about any unanticipated costs or fees?
#4: What is your roll out plan?
The key here is practicality:
- Is there a path for sequential roll out to minimize risks?
- Can we bound the work by geography, business unit or limited partner release?
- Have you balanced risk and reward?
- Are your partner assumptions realistic?
#5: How does your work tie out to the stated strategy of the firm?
If you are in a publicly-traded firm, they go on record publically with a strategy and forecast quarterly. Check out websites like seeking alpha, which keeps an extensive history, as well as analyst insights and notes. For private firms your work is a bit harder, but still quite important. Eventually every project needs to go through a filter at the enterprise level, and looking at this early, will save much time and effort later. Be careful to read for focal points in:
- Geography – where are we concentrating?
- Technology – what are our points of emphasis and deep capability?
- Talent – what differential investments are being made?
#6: What headline would you write for the business press about your project?
This is a great place to start because it forces you to a new and different perspective – that of stakeholder or perhaps investor. By shifting your viewpoint, you need to also do the work of explaining how this would be good not only for your internal team, but the company as a whole. This work takes us full circle to the external factors and gives us traceability and clarity.
Managing up is a critical skill set and part of the “Champion” cluster of competencies we build in these workshops – after all, executive sponsorship is critical if a project is going to make its benchmarks and succeed (70-80 percent of growth projects don’t). By nailing these questions, you’ll move head and shoulders above programs that haven’t done their homework, and in fact may well move up the list of projects that would traditionally be considered “locked” since they were part of the firm’s core.
If you’d like to know more about doing the work to elevate your project in one of our Right Project, Right Team, Right Plan workshops, please give me a call at 847-651-1014 or use this link to set up a 20-minute (no-strings-attached) chat.
