Christopher Walker

Take 30-minutes to document all project hazards and risks, conducting a pre-mortem as a team. Why? It’s almost inevitable that something will go wrong. Prepare for that. To paraphrase Seneca, to rehearse death is to rehearse freedom; by thoughtfully collaborating on a list of risks, you give your team a better chance to avoid them. Best of all: by getting the team comfortable discussing hypothetical risks, you increase the ability to talk more courageously and objectively about the real problems that will inevitably be encountered.

Set a calendar event for 3pm every Friday to write down your top 3 accomplishments of the week. Why? It’s IMPOSSIBLE to recall all of your progress from memory alone; by logging your achievements, you’ll hold yourself accountable to accumulating all of the evidence necessary for that next gig. And when you reflect proactively on your contributions from last week, you’ll act even more proactively next week. Best of all: you’ll have a ready-made showcase of bona-fides to present when advocating for more responsibilities.

Try this question: “<On this specific deliverable or action>, what’s one thing I could have done better?” Why? It’s HARD to give feedback: there are dozens of dynamics at play, including situational context, relationship strength, and an often complex consideration of expectations, skill levels, and roles. When you invite feedback on a specific action, you dramatically reduce the cognitive load required to assess and comment. Best of all: you signal your enthusiasm for improvement to your colleagues – this helps in creating a virtuous cycle of even MORE feedback offered even MORE proactively.

Often the best way to be understood when communicating goals/benefits is to speak in terms of profitability, potentially in the form of a) how this ensures greater revenue and/or b) how this results in lower cost to deliver. Gain greater buy-in and alignment by ensuring all of your stakeholders understand the impact on the business bottom line.

“Before we begin, can we all give ourselves permission to interrupt if we’re going into too much or too little detail?” Interrupting can be a crucial skill for facilitators (and, for that matter, anyone that wants to be productive in a meeting). Make it easy to interject and set this as a shared expectation before kicking things off. Take it a step further by giving the group a shared phrase or even an inside joke. “Parking lot!” (with a visible place to capture those topics) can be a great phrase to make it safe and even motivating for anyone to speak up when a tangent may become unproductive.

Consider starting first with impacting profitability as your objective – particularly if you’re looking for a simple, clear, and more direct path to help your scoping. You’ll increase likelihood of success if a) your efforts are having a tangible business impact and b) your stakeholders understand that tangible business impact. You might find that speaking about profitability (typically understood via Revenue and Cost) to be a shortcut in prioritizing and communicating the value of the assessment. For example: do your efforts need to impact 1) Revenue (eg. better training, faster staffing, improved communication, etc.) or 2) Cost (eg. controlling attrition, consolidating tools/resources, improving cross-functional collaboration).